The Museum of Glass: International Center for Contemporary Art, dedicated to presenting the medium of glass within the context of contemporary art in all media, opened to the public on July 6, 2002.

Photo: Russell Johnson

Drawing on the primary elements - fire, water, earth and sky - the architecture of the Museum flows effortlessly into the landscape. These elements appear throughout the building's architecture in features such as the infinity edged reflecting pools on the stepped terraces and the sweeping concrete stairway that wraps the exterior of the cone.

Amid a scruffy sprawl of warehouses and marinas, on a former brownfield site in Tacoma, Washington, sits the sparkling new Museum of Glass. Subtitled the International Center for Contemporary Art, this is the most recent hope for reviving Tacoma's lackluster downtown core.

The 75,000-square-foot (7000-square-meter), $63 million project was designed by the preeminent Canadian architect Arthur Erickson in collaboration with Nick Milkovich Architects Inc., of Vancouver, British Columbia, and Thomas Cook Reed Reinvald of Tacoma. The building is Erickson's first major art museum in the United States.