All the Museum of Glass really needed was some glass.
Okay, that's not entirely fair. The Museum of Glass, formerly known as the Museum of Glass: International Center for Contemporary Art, always had glass. The two best shows in its six years of existence have been the opening display of monumental, ghostly sculptures by Czech artists Stanislav Libensky and Jaroslava Brychtova, and the traveling show Glass of the Avant-Garde: From Vienna Secession to Bauhaus in 2003.
But the misfires, by turns haughty and cloying—incongruous shows of conceptual paintings, anime culture, and, worst, an exhibition of depictions of dogs—were glaring signs of underlying conflict.
Last spring, shortly after the museum hired new director Timothy Close, I stopped by. It was a Monday, so I couldn't get in, but I wandered around the exterior, with its three tiers of plazas meant for art, connecting to the city-owned Chihuly Bridge of Glass. It was deserted.
Windows on the bridge were broken, and another city project, a "forest" of tubes with water running down them, was still just a bunch of cordoned-off holes in the ground—as it has been since it was vandalized six years ago. The reflecting pools had no art (with the exception of Buster Simpson's lonely leaning panes), and were in the late stages of evaporation. I got out of there fast.
What a difference a year—and, more deeply, a new direction—makes. Along with dropping its pretentious surname, the museum has dropped its patronizing attitude and embraced glass and Tacoma. It has begun a permanent collection, hired its first staff curator (the job was left gaping for years), and kept its link to contemporary art—last spring I'd been trying to see a show by electronic artist Jim Campbell—while genuinely focusing on glass. Art is scheduled to return to the pools by fall.
Last month, the museum launched a live web feed from the museum's heart, its cavernous, cone-shaped hot shop. By contrast, the squat, windowless galleries still are stifling, but you're pleasantly distracted by independent curator Vicki Halper's primer on glass, Contrasts, which closes in 2009 after a three-year run, but could stay up much longer. It is not as simple as it looks, quietly challenging persistent questions about craft, art, and glass, using objects from the realms of art, religion, factory design, haute design, and science (including a series of 19th-century study invertebrates made of glass because real invertebrates were too difficult to preserve).
Solo shows by glass stars Dante Marioni and Lino Tagliapietra are sparkling but have a common problem: too many objects, too much hero worship. Nothing's perfect. But an identity crisis has been diagnosed and cured. 
