Three Round Tours
The turning point of the exhibition and the museum architecture - artistically set in scene in glass - is a glass furnace, representing the fiery “heart” of each glass factory. Three thematically round walks circulate around this centre:
The Journey with the Glass leads visitors from the foyer into the round stage on which they wander through views onto European history, civilisation and culture, with all the ensuing upturns and downfalls – as it is mirrored in representational glass objects, in architecture, in room decoration, jewellery and table culture. Accompanied by merchants and border-crossing glass makers and technologists, we travel through countries and cities, cross the centres of zeitgeist and consumption. In glasses, contemporary documents and archaeological findings we discover the world understanding of European historical epochs up to our present time.
In the inner circle of the museum the people from the glass works tell about Living and Working with Glass: They explain the work procedures of glass manufacturing and talk about their everyday lives, their culture, and the changes on the threshold to the 21st Century. The exhibition shows the memory of the glass producing region through a collage of objects, images and stories, as they could be found by the end of the 20th century in and around the Bavarian Forest glass works.
Both departments reach out towards the question about the future of glass and its people.
One way out is suggested by the third department of the permanent exhibition: Modern Glass. Here, on two floors, the exceptional collection of works of International artists of the 20th and 21st Century is presented together with the history of the International Studio Glass Movement, which has its European centre in Frauenau.