Harvey K. Littleton

Harvey K. Littleton, Littleton Studios

"Harvey K. Littleton, the man called the "father of the Studio Glass Movement" was not at first a glass artist. After receiving a Master of Fine Arts from Cranbrook Academy of Arts in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, he embarked on the career of potter. Littleton received recognition for his work as a ceramist in a national exhibition sponsored by the American Crafts Council and at the First International Exposition of ceramics in Cannes, France. "

In 1959 he began to investigate the possibility of glass as a medium, and in 1960 had melted glass and cold-worked lumps of glass. In the summer of 1962 the Toledo Museum of Art invited Littleton to lead a glassblowing workshop. It was in that seminar that Littleton introduced the idea that glass could be mixed and melted, blown and worked in the studio by the artist. Up to that time it was widely believed that glass objects could only be made in the highly structured, mass-produced world of the glass industry where the labor of making glass is divided between designers and skilled craftsmen.

That fall Littleton, who had been employed since 1951 as a ceramics teacher at the University of Wisconsin, began to offer glassblowing classes through the university at his farm outside Madison, Wisconsin. In 1963 he established a graduate course and glass studio at the university that attracted as students such well-known artists as Marvin Lipofsky and Dale Chihuly.

Littleton set up Littleton Studios and in the mid-1980's, working with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, brought painters to his studio to work on vitreograph prints with his staff. The success of that project encouraged Littleton to continue to invite painters, printmakers, potters and glass artists to his studio to experiment with the medium.

Selected Exhibitions & Awards
Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, 2004
Belk Gallery, Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC, 2002
Wisconsin Academy Fellow, Wisconsin Academy of Science, Arts and Letters, 2001
Bonita Springs Center For the Arts, Bonita Springs, FL, 2001
Mint Museum of Craft + Design, Charlotte, NC, 2001
Arkansas Art Center Decorative Arts Museum, Little Rock, AR, 2001
Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2000
St. John's Museum of Art, Wilmington, N.C. 2000
Hunter Museum of Art, Chattanooga, TN, 2000
Elvehjem Museum of Art, Madison, WI, 1999
M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, CA, 1999
Museum of Art, Tallahassee, FL, 1999
James Renwick Alliance Award as Master of the Glass Medium, 1997
Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts, Rhode Island School of Design, 1996
American Craft Museum Visionary Award, 1994
Lifetime Achievement Award, Glass Art Society, 1993
Diploma of Honors, Glass Museum of Frauenau, Germany, 1988
Rakow Award for Excellence in The Art of Glass, Corning Museum of Glass, 1987
Gold Medal of the American Crafts Council, 1983
Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts, Philadelphia Museum of the Arts, 1982

Collections
Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA
St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO
Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY
Decorative Arts Museum, Prague, Czech Republic
Decorative Arts Museum, Vienna, Austria
Decorative Arts Museum, Hamburg, Germany
Decorative Arts Museum, Frankfort, Germany
Elvehjem Museum of Art, Madison, WI
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Glasmuseum Frauenau, Germany
Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, Sapporo, Japan
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX
National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan
Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR
Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH
Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England
The White House Collection of American Craft, Washington, D.C.