Corning Museum of Glass officials are feeling as if they won the lottery these days thanks to a hefty bequest of contemporary studio glass valued at $9.5 million recently announced and that will likely take place in stages over the next year.

American art collector Ben W. Heineman Sr and his wife Natalie have long been discerning collectors of studio glass and have assembled a remarkable collection over the last 30 years featuring vessels and sculptures by such leading artists as Howard Ben Tré, Dale Chihuly, Michael Glancy, David Huchthausen, Stanislav Libensky, Klaus Moje, Joel Philip Myers and others.

After careful thought and considering several museums, the couple announced that they would donate the collection to Corning, making it the largest gift in the museum’s history. The collection of more than 200 works will be introduced to the public in a special exhibition in the summer of 2009.

“Mr and Mrs Heineman have collected in depth, following important artists over the course of their careers from the 1960s to today,” said Dr David Whitehouse, the museum’s executive director. “This collection of contemporary glass, which is of extraordinarily high quality, will significantly augment the museum’s holdings. It includes what will be some of the finest pieces in the permanent collection.”

The museum, which opened in 1951, holds one of the largest and most inclusive collections of modern and contemporary glass in the world and was the first museum to showcase international contemporary studio glass in the groundbreaking exhibition, “New Glass: A Worldwide Survey,” which toured the United States and Japan from 1979 to 1982.

Red/amber sliced descending form, blown glass, cased, cut by Harvey K. Littleton (American, b 1922), 1981-1984. The Corning Museum of Glass, promised gift of the Ben W. Heineman Sr Family.

Though the museum has a comprehensive collection, financialand resources constraints would make it illogical and impossiblefor a museum to buy a particular artist in any great depth, as theHeinemans were able to do as private collectors.

Tina Oldknow, the museum’s curator of modern glass, said the gift fills in holes in the museum’s current contemporary collection and allows it to expand its representation of important works in glass.

“We really deepened and broadened our collections in a way that would have taken us years to do if we decided to go out and buy them,” she said, noting several of the artists included in the Heineman collection have been working for more than 25 years. “It enables us to have a wonderful representation of an artist’s work in depth.”

The Heinemans had a discerning eye in selecting beautifully executed pieces, she said, saying each piece is of the finest quality and the collection features a great variation among the artists’ works. Pieces were chosen for their execution, their rarity, the ambition of a work and in context to other works by the artist.

Examples of the collection’s breadth include nearly a dozen peach blown cylinders created in the 1970s by Chihuly and a grouping of hutform sculptures by Tom Patti.

“This kind of collecting would almost be irresponsible as a museum curator but when you are able to see them together, it changes your attitude toward the artist’s work,” Oldknow said. “What [the Heinemans] have done is something I couldn’t have done and that needs to be done. It might not be right for other museums but for us, it’s just perfect.”

Heineman, former chairman and CEO of Northwest Industries and trustee emeritus of the museum, said he and his wife chose Corning as the recipient of their collection, now housed in their Chicago home, because of the museum’s outstanding reputation, the high caliber of its special exhibitions and permanent collections, its educational programs and the international audience it attracts.

#17, kiln-formed glass by Klaus Moje (German, b 1936), 1988. The Corning Museum of Glass, promised gift of the Ben W. Heineman Sr Family.

“After several years of investigation and thought, there isno disposition that we would rather have made,” he said. “Natalieand I are both happy that our beloved collection will be in suchgood hands. We have great confidence in the personnel of the museumand in the presentation and care that the collection will receive.”

Whitehouse said that what the Heinemans did in their collecting matches what the Corning has tried to do in focusing on a number of glass artists that were interesting or important although the couple was able to collect in greater depth than the museum.

“You can put together a collection of contemporary art… and you can amass some examples of very big names but that doesn’t tell you much about the artist and the spiritual journey of that big name,” he said. “But if you have 5, 10 works that represent the 20, 25 years of their development, then you have a really wonderful document of that particular artist’s journey.”

The museum, which receives 300,000 visitors annually, will spend the next year and half cataloging the collection, which is so large it will be delivered in stages, and preparing to unveil it to the public in 2009 in its newly renamed contemporary glass gallery, The Ben W. Heineman Sr Family Gallery.” A smaller named gallery will present unprecedented solo exhibitions focusing on individual artists’ careers as represented in works drawn from the museum’s permanent collections. A fully illustrated catalog will accompany the major exhibition.

For more information, visit www.cmog.org.