“Henry, leave her alone!” said the wife of the man who asked me that question a few weeks ago. What are you supposed to say to that? I need questions I can answer! How do you get to the Hot Glass Show? Well, follow the black carpet to the end of the hall, until you see a red room. What is the natural color of glass? Green. What do you have on your cart? Hands-on objects that I can explain to you. What’s the score of the game? Um….???

Although many Explainers wear them this summer, I have never adorned my uniform with the “Ask Me” buttons available to us. I wore my “Ask a Gallery Wizard” button all last summer to complement the Alchemy exhibition, and was subjected to questions like, “Can you do a trick for me?” and “Where’s your wand?” I never knew how to respond. I’d just smile, let out a little laugh, and say, “Well, I left it at home this morning.”

So, this year, I’ve decided to ask the questions. Button-free, I approach visitors looking down desperately at their map and then back at the landscape. “Can I help you with something?” “Do you have any questions?” That way, I never have to worry about being side-swiped by questions like, “I’m 63 now. How old will I be when we get out of here if my wife continues to read every single label?”

I recently asked my fellow Explainers to tell me the most interesting question they’ve ever gotten on a cart. We all recognize the most common question to be, “So, what am I supposed to ask you?” Some carts just come with automatic questions. The casting cart, for example, apparently warrants the question, “What’s the ducky’s name?” when we discuss sand-and-ladle casting using our example made from the impression of a rubber toy. Then there are those people who like to amuse with a rousing rendition of “Rubber Ducky, You’re the One!” But that’s an entirely different story.

Museum visitors have asked Explainers strange questions in regard to directions this summer. “Can you tell me where the big cheese is?” someone asked new Explainer, Katie McCann, referring presumably to the 200-inch disc that most associate with a honey comb. “Where’s Ben?” another visitor asked long-time Explainer, Katie Kremer. Their child? A face in a piece of glass? Who can tell???  “Can you tell me how to get to the flame throwing demo?” Lauren Davis was asked a few weeks ago. Flame throwing? Perhaps at the Renaissance Festival? Here, we have flame working. Much less dangerous! And finally, a hungry guest asked new Explainer Emily Sporn where to find the best Philly cheese steak. Yes, Explainers give all kinds of directions.

And sometimes, we’re misconstrued as someone famous. “Are you this guy?” a visitor asked first-year Explainer Adam Stickler, showing him a picture of a football player on his camera. Then there are other times when we’re just not quite what the visitor is looking for. “Do you have anyone here like you, but Jewish?” a group of girls asked third-year Explainer Rafael Gollier.

Then there are Explainers who look like they might have a good sense of humor. I always walk around to check on those standing on carts, and a few days ago, I walked to up my new friend Sven Thomas, who greeted me with, “A guy just told me a joke and I didn’t get it until he was gone!” You just have to ask after that! “You don’t have any 17^th Century glass here,” the man said. “It’s all Baroque.” To which Sven apparently responded, “Yes we do. It’s right over there.” The man smiled, thanked Sven, and walked away. “And then I got it!” Sven told me moments later. Katie McCann told me the joke she was asked a few days later. “What do you call a deer with 20/20 vision? A good eye-deer!” Clearly, the man must have been reminded of the joke when viewing the glass he saw in the Voices exhibition with an engraving of deer in a forest. Or perhaps he just wanted to tickle an Explainer’s funny bone.

Other questions Explainers have gotten include: “Are teeth made out of glass?” “Do they use food coloring to make colors in glass?” “Where are all the hot chicks?” “Are the people who founded the Rockwell Museum related to the Rockwells?” and “So why did Corning happen?”

A final popular one for the summer is, “Can I take this with me?” referring to a piece the visitor picked up on a cart. Hey at least they asked! A few years ago, a visitor approached an Explainer and (jokingly, of course) said, “See that piece over there? I want you to meet me in the parking lot with it at 5 o’clock. Got that?”

Even that was better than what happened to me the first year I worked at the museum. Asian tours tend to rush through the museum at more than a rapid pace—the leaders raise an umbrella for all on the tour to see so they don’t get lost—then they take off! A woman didn’t have time to stop, and apparently thought my cut and pressed glass on the American cart was for sale. As she flew by, she dropped a $50 on my cart, grabbed the most beautiful piece of cut glass I had and sprinted off after her tour guide. Needless to say, I followed suit and explained to her the piece was not for sale…

No questions asked.

Kim on the caneworking cart in the Voices of Glass exhibition. Ask me!

For so many of the kids I have given tours to, that was their first time visiting CMoG, and it may very well be their last. I consider it a privilege to show them around and shed a little light into the astounding world of glass. So many of the pieces in our collection have extraordinary stories behind them. I love to get the kids involved and ask lots of questions. “What do you think the artist was feeling when she designed this piece?” “Do you have any idea how much this piece weighs?” “What does this piece say to you?”

Sure, I play the games we have for our school tours. We’ve done the “Be a Designer” tour for years to go along with the “You Design It, We Make It” hot glass show. “What did you think about when you drew your picture for the glass show?” I’d ask. “Well, what things does a designer have to think about when getting ready to make a piece of glass?”  We talk about color, size, texture, shape and even description. I show cards containing the silhouette of a piece of glass in our Modern gallery and have the kids find it. “Is that what you thought you’d find when I showed you this image?” I ask. Many times, they’ll say no—they thought when I showed them the black image of the tiny rabbit that looks almost stone-like in reality, that it’d be a “large purple bunny.” I have them describe what they see. “So a designer needs to have a lot more than the shape picked out before making his piece, right?” Later on, we play another game where I remind them about the descriptions they gave of the pieces they found in the shape game, and I tell them I will now describe a piece to them and they have to find it. “You found it pretty fast, so was that a good description?” It all works out rather well.

But what I’ve found over the past four years of giving this tour is that the more I put into it, the more we all get out of it. The energy level I put in, and the excitement I have about the glass, makes the kids equally excited and engaged. It’s the difference between having an awful tour (that requires a good fifteen-minute break and time with a stress ball afterward) and a fantastic learning experience for everyone involved. Don’t get me wrong—I speak from personal experience with the stress ball, as sometimes a bad tour just happens. Kids aren’t interested or they’re misbehaving—and there isn’t a thing you can do about it. But I’ve recently discovered that if you’re passionate about what you’re discussing, for kids, the games are just gravy.

For the tours I’ve given already this summer, I really haven’t depended too much on games, like I did the first couple summers of tours. Having worked here so long, I have favorite pieces that always evoke great responses from kids. I tell stories in an exciting way that not only entertains those on my tour, but also helps them retain the information. Many times, at the end of a tour, I’ll ask everyone to give me one piece of information they learned. It always amazes me when it’s not a typical response like, “Some of this glass is really old.” Six-year-olds tell me, “Glass is naturally green because of iron.” “The big (Tiffany) stained glass window is really not stained glass—it’s colored glass.” “The piece with the man who looks like he follows you does that because he’s engraved on the back.” And one of my favorites is not so much a fact as, in my opinion, a very accurate observation, “Josh Simpson (who made the Megaplanet) is one cool guy.”

All in all, the job of an Explainer may not be the easiest one, but, at least for me, it has been more rewarding than I ever could have dreamed. While some may begin the training program thinking only about having a summer job, it quickly becomes so much more. When I first started working at the museum, I remember thinking how cool it was that I was getting paid to do something I loved. And five years later, I’m happy to say that feeling hasn’t changed a bit.

~Kim Price

The Explainer program began in 2005 with roughly eight people holding the title. The employee list has now grown to include about 30 names each year. I volunteered during that first summer, along with another current Explainer, and the two of us have been hooked ever since. Even though we are the only ones from that original year left, each year, we get a new crew of excited high schoolers, eager to learn and share their knowledge of glass.

Explainers have many jobs around the museum, but when it comes right down to it, an Explainer is someone who knows a lot of information about the museum and shares it with our visitors from all over the world. Explainers go through a rigorous training program, which when I started, spanned the entire school year, but is now broken up into two shorter sessions. We are trained in the glass collection galleries so we are able to answer practically any puzzling question a visitor might ask.

All our training arms us with knowledge to be employed at the museum during July and August, the busiest tour season. During those summer months, Explainers man hands-on carts in the galleries, which provide visitors with an up-close-and-personal look at the glass they see in the cases. There are seven carts, ranging in topic from ancient glass to caneworking. Techniques, methods, and even a little chemistry are discussed, and those who come up to the carts leave with knowledge they otherwise might not have gained.

To see amazement on faces when you explain how a bundle of glass rods was fused and stretched to create a very small rod with a tiny pattern in the middle is both extraordinary and rewarding. To know you’ve provided an understanding of glass that a visitor might not get from reading the labels, for me, takes the “job” part out of my work, and just makes me grateful to have been there to help people learn.

Having worked at CMoG for four summers, with that extra summer of volunteering thrown in, I have learned which carts I like and exactly how to explain them, so I get the most information across in the best way possible. I have watched countless reactions to the game played on the American cart. “Do you know the difference between cut and pressed glass?” People who originally answer no, leave my cart feeling successful for having done so well discerning the hand-cut pieces on the cart from those made in a mold, and even wander to nearby cases to see if they can tell the difference again.

More to come…

~Kim Price