Transcription of Brian Kennedy

To give a heads up: This is the transcription of how I'd reorganized it, as that's the file I had on me to use. I can easilly reorganize this into the original order if we need that done when I get back.
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Everybody says to me "What is so great about Toledo?" I want to tell you: It's people. These are some of the most wonderful warm inviting people you'll ever meet. The Toledo Museum of Art is one of the great glass collections of the world, we're honored to have an extraordinary pavillion here in which we have examples from all around the world actually from the start of glass making so it's one of the best places to come. The Toledo Museum of Art has one of the world's great glass collections from the beginning of glass making right through to today and can show it in a marvelous building: the Glass Pavillion, opened in 2006. I was attracted to come to Toledo because it has a marvelous museum which has multiple buildings, each of which has won archetectural awards. The collection is singular with great works by great artists whose names we know and don't know throughout time. It's free and open to the public, that's been important to me, and it has been hugely supported by it's community over the years. Every work of glass that we aquire for the Museum is subject to the same criteria that we apply to every single work that comes into the museum, it has to be of significant quality, I mean really the best of it's time. It has to be of technical virtuosity and it has to have real imagination and creativity so that it really engages the public emotionally. The Glass Art Movement really began here in Toledo in 1962 when two workshops were held and Otto Wittman who was the director of the Toledo Museum of Art then invited Harvey Littleton who was the intellectual driving force for the Glass Movement to come here and subsequently in the next few years from 1966 through 1971 served the exhibitions were organized inviting individual glass artists to come to Toledo, and then a major exhibition was held in '71 which declared that this individual glass making had now become a team effort, not just in America, but around the world. This city is exciting, it's got lots of secrets to show you, and of course some public ones like the Toledo Museum of Art, come, have a great time, you'll enjoy yourselves.

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Time taken: 1.25 hours.