Current & Coming Exhibits
Building Skyward:
Michael Mikula
August 8, 2025 – February 15, 2026
Award winning artist Michael Mikula creates glass sculptures and vessels that draw the viewer towards deeper discoveries. Contemplations on architecture, from ancient to contemporary, are the starting point for reinterpreting structure and detail. Going beyond form and color, glass components are individually cast, blown, cut and polished, and composed to play with the material’s ability to refract light. The result is mesmerizing artworks that are sure to be unforgettable focal points in any private or public space. Mikula is always examining built environments for their patterns, forms and details to spark his imagination. For more than two decades he has explored a process using multi-part graphite molds as a tool for introducing imagery into blown glass.
“Think of a Louise Nevelson sculpture to imagine what a mold looks like as molten glass fills the form – taking it’s shape in reverse. My use of color is purposefully understated to focus attention on form and how the imagery and light is captured and reflected through the glass. My goal is that each piece be a well designed and crafted object with integrity and lasting value”.
– Michael Mikula
Michael Mikula is the winner of the 2024 GLASS Arts Festival and the recipient of First Place Prize sponsored by Rosann Baum Milius.
Collection Showcase
April 25 – December 7, 2025
Bergstrom-Mahler Museum of Glass is home to more than 350 works of contemporary studio glass from internationally recognized artists. This exhibition highlights various making techniques employed in the creation of these sculptures and wall hangings, including blowing, casting, fusing, sandblasting, and coldworking. Included in this exhibition are works by artists John Littleton, Kate Vogel, Joel Philip Myers, Milon Townsend, Martie Negri, Bernard Katz, Jon Wolfe, Therman Statom, Michael Meilahn, Richard Jolley, Vladimira Klumpar, Thomas McGlauchlin, Rick Beck, Jose Chardiet, Will Pappenheimer, and Marco and Mattia Salvadore.
Bergstrom-Mahler Museum of Glass is grateful to our generous donors for their contributions of artwork to the permanent collection.
Victorian art GLass Baskets
February 7 – December 7, 2025
Did you know that in addition to antique glass paperweights, Evangeline Bergstrom also collected decorative glass tableware, vases and baskets? These baskets reached the height of their popularity around 1885. English and American glass factories responded to the rise of consumerism and the increasing desire for highly-embellished items by creating and marketing fanciful glass table decorations for middle and upper-class households. Come see a selection of Mrs. Bergstrom’s Victorian Art Glass Baskets, on exhibit in the Mabel R. McClanahan Memorial Study Gallery.