William Warmus

William Warmus is a curator, art critic, and author focusing on transparent media.

Education Warmus holds a B.A. in art history from the University of Chicago in 1975 and was enrolled in the Masters in General Studies in the Humanities program in 1976. The Warmus archive is at the Rakow Library of the Corning Museum of Glass. As noted in "The Corning Museum of Glass: Notable Acquisitions 2016" (Corning: The Museum) p. 54:"Warmus continues to be an important voice analyzing and evaluating contemporary glass. His journals chronicle the development of his theories, which predicted the end of the Studio Glass movement (1995) and posited "Glass Secessionism" with the artist Tim Tate (American, b. 1960). Warmus's philosophy of "Reticulate Aesthetics" considers the structure of art as a net or web, rather than a hierarchy." Warmus also writes about the aesthetics of the ocean realm, which has influenced his art criticism. His theory of reticulate aesthetics is outlined in "From a Tree to a Web," American Craft, v.75, no.2, April/May 2015, pp. 104–107. His observations about the end of the studio glass movement are in "The End?," Glass Quarterly, no. 60, Fall 1995, pp. 42–45.

Critic and curator Lydia Matthews, writing in American Craft Inquiry (“Daring to Dive Deeply: A Conversation about Craft Writing and Criticism” Volume One, Issue One, November 2016) observed that Warmus developed his theory of Reticulate Aesthetics partly as a response to the critical positions of Clement Greenberg:“To address this expansive complexity in the contemporary craft scene, Warmus increasingly recognized that Greenberg's focus on materiality and form alone no longer seemed viable. Inspired by the kind of embodied knowledge acquired through experiences as a scuba diver, he began to envision a new way of looking at craft – one more akin to viewing the rich underwater world.He described this analytical viewpoint as “reticulate,” which the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines as: “genetic recombination involving diverse interbreeding populations.” There is no judging “good,” “better,” “best” when comparing an octopus, shark, and a coral, so why would you want to impose hierarchical critical criteria to “species” in the craft world rather than seeing them as coexisting or hybridizing within a larger, more intricate ecosystem? Reticulate criticism proposes a more horizontal, weblike, and networked approach to writing about craft, one which recognizes that our field evolves organically over time, in response to specific environmental conditions.”

In 2020 Warmus curated “Venice and American Studio Glass” with Tina Oldknow at the Stanze del Vetro Museum in Venice, exploring the profound impact of Venice on American Studio Glass artists, beginning in the 1960s. In 2022 he curated “Years of Glass” at the Norton Museum in Palm Beach, exploring how glass as a medium is integrated into a contemporary fine art museum collection. In 2023 he co-authored “The Boathouse: The Artist’s Studio of Dale Chihuly” distributed by the University of Washington Press.

Published books