Cross post: God damn it, Dale Chihuly ®™ is really coming to the Seattle Center

Or at least lots of glass made by him is. Personally, I think that Chihuly is extremely over rated. The guy hasn't actually blown his own glass in years due to a car accident. Instead, he just designs pieces and has other people execute them. The thing one always hears is that Chihuly has been great for the promotion of artisanal glass in the Northwest, but that as an artist, well, he's not quite as revolutionary as he would like to you to believe. There's lots of wonderful glass in the northwest, but actually constructing a museum for Chihuly seems a little like creating a Thomas Kinkade museum in order to promote painting.