The Seattle Center’s Consolation Prize: A Visit to the Chihuly Gardens & Glass

On a recent trip to the Northwest, my family and I ended up at many of the same Seattle landmarks that everyone else visits. These include Pike Place Market, the original Starbucks coffee shop, and the Space Needle, as well as kid-centric attractions like the aquarium and kids’ museum. Since we have extended relatives in the Seattle area, we have been there several times, and it seems like the lines are longer each time we visit.

On some trips, it’s nice to avoid the throngs of humanity and visit places that are less well-known. But this was a quick stopover and we didn’t bother renting a car, so we were stuck in the downtown area anyway. We decided to play tourists for a couple of days.

The lines were particularly long when we arrived at the Space Needle, which anchors the Seattle Center complex. This iconic tower was built for the 1962 World’s Fair. At that time, it was the tallest building west of the Mississippi River (605 feet or 184 meters tall). It’s worth buying an overpriced ticket and riding an elevator to the top if only for the view. From the observation deck on the top, you can see the snow-covered volcanic peak of Mount Rainier, the waters of Puget Sound and the Olympic Peninsula to the west, and various bays and lakes, not to mention the skyline of Seattle and its tableau of urban scenery.

The problem, on our recent visit, was that we arrived behind floods of other tourists. You buy your Space Needle ticket for a particular time, and when there are busloads of tour busses in front of you, then you have to wait a while for your time to come up. Wait times can easily reach an hour or two for those (like us) who do not plan ahead.

So what should we do while we wait? Let’s see what else there is at this Seattle Center. There’s the monorail terminal, but we’d taken that already to get here. There’s the Pacific Science Center, which sounds like fun, but we’d recently taken the kids to another science museum. There was the kids’ museum, but we’d save that for later when attention spans would be limited. Pop culture museum? They’re too young still.

How about the glass museum? Sure, why not, and conveniently you can buy a ticket at the same time you get the Space Needle one. So we headed over to the Chihuly Garden and Glass museum, which was a few steps further.

Image Source: Chihuly Gardens & Glass.

Dale Chihuly is a celebrity glass artist and entrepreneur; most people either love or hate his work. From the ticket prices and the fact that his pieces seems to be everywhere these days (from the Victoria & Albert Museum in London to the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas), it seems that more people love it than hate it. Seattle’s Chihuly Garden and Glass is a tribute to this native son whose glassblowing work continues to captivate the public.

Dale Chihuly at his recent show in Atlanta. Source: CNN.

Chihuly and his studio create beautiful work. There are a couple of controversies that surround it. First, some purists question whether it is true art, since one can argue that these pieces are more visually pleasing than aesthetic. Second, Chihuly doesn’t create the work himself anymore, due to his injuries from a car accident and a bodysurfing accident. Instead, he supervises a team of glassblowers who create it under his specifications and using the techniques he has developed. And perhaps that makes him more of an entrepreneur than an artist.

The work and the style remains unique. And it is visually appealing, something to interest even younger kids. Here are a few pictures I took on our recent visit to the Chihuly Gardens and Glass in Seattle as we waited for our Space Needle reservation. Yes, that was worth the wait, and the wait wasn’t so bad.

All photos by the author unless otherwise indicated.