Anyone privileged to attend a Metropolitan Opera production in New York will recall the pre-performance experience: As the audience stills in anticipation of the first strains of music, 12 starburst chandeliers slowly float into the house’s celestial golden vault.
Josiah McElheny certainly remembers. A master in the craft of glasswork, beginning in 2004 he took upon himself the four-year task of reinterpreting the Met’s so-called “sputniks” for his work “Island Universe.” The five sculptures he made, along with related works on paper and a 20-minute film, are on view at Stanford University’s Cantor Arts Center through Aug. 18.
Following repair in 2016 of the machinery that raises and lowers the Metropolitan Opera’s crystal chandeliers, the Met produced this video to announce that the light fixtures “once again rise elegantly to the ceiling to signal the beginning of each performance.” The chandeliers partly inspired Josiah McElheny’s “Island Universe.” This video by the Metropolitan Opera, used by permission, is not the artist’s film shown in the exhibition.
McElheny was awarded a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” in 2006. He is surely the only glass artist to achieve that distinction, and it was based primarily upon the conceptual rigor of his work, not his exquisite craftsmanship. The artist is known for sculpture that ingeniously imbues the “decorative” arts with deeper meaning. Or, as in the case of “Island Universe,” teases out the significance that lies behind the ornamental surface of utilitarian objects.
It turns out, McElheny learned in his research, that the design of the original Met chandeliers has a lot to do with the cosmology it visually and intuitively suggests. Hans Harald Rath, designer for the Austrian glassware company Lobmeyr, worked closely with architect Wallace K. Harrison, who…
