Corning Museum of Glass

Jane Shadel Spillman joined the Museum in 1965 and in 1978 became the Museum’s curator of American glass. Spillman has published numerous articles and books, including European Glass Furnishings for Eastern Palaces and The American %%Cut%% Glass Industry: T.G. Hawkes and His Competitors. She currently serves as editor of The Glass Club Bulletin. She also has curated many important exhibitions at the Museum, including Glass from World’s Fairs (1986), The Queen’s Collection: Danish Royal Glass (1996), and Glass of the Maharajahs (2006).

Spillman retired in 2013 after 48 years at the Museum. During her tenure she was asked to catalog the glass and ceramics collection at the White House, resulting in the publication White House Glassware: Two Centuries of Presidential Entertaining (1989) and the exhibition Dining at the White House at the Museum. In 1999, she was part of a group responsible for getting the United States Postal Service to create stamps commemorating American glass.

Spillman earned her A.B. at Vassar College and has a degree from the Cooperstown Graduate Program in Museum Training. She is a member of the American Alliance of Museums, where she has served on the Board, National Programming Committee, Governance Committee, and Curators Committee, of which she was chair for five years. She is also a member of the National American Glass Club, International Council of Museums, American %%Cut%% Glass Association, Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums, Rushlight Club, and The Glass Circle, London. She has been the General Secretary of the International Association for the History of Glass since 2003.