Art and Design

Artist Biography

Born in Philadelphia, PA in 1947, visual artist Dan Dailey received his B.F.A. in 1969 from the Philadelphia College of Art and his M.F.A. in 1972 from the Rhode Island School of Design, where he studied with Dale Chihuly. He received a Fulbright Fellowship to study glass at the Venini Factory in Murano, Italy, and throughout his impressive career, has worked with various renowned glass-making brands and companies, including Cristallerie Daum, Steuben Glass Works, Fenton Art Glass Company, and Waterford Crystal.

Working primarily in glass and metal with an emphasis on lighting, Dailey transforms his chosen materials into vibrant—and oftentimes humorous—forms that bridge the sculptural and the functional and are evocative of the human character. Known as “one of the most unique voices within the field of contemporary glass,” Dailey has received many architectural commissions for both public and private buildings, and his work is in the permanent collections of over 50 museums, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Corning Museum of Glass, the Boca Raton Museum of Art; the Toledo Museum of Art, and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Louvre, Paris. In addition to partaking in many group exhibitions, he was awarded both a solo exhibition by the Renwick Gallery and a retrospective by the University of the Arts, Philadelphia in 1987. He is Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, where he founded the Glass Department in 1973, and has also taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Pilchuck Glass School, and elsewhere.