We went to the Toledo Museum of Art in late November on a Friday due to the recent opening of the glass pavillion and had a great time. Toledo has a real gem in its art museum and best of all it is free, not crowded, and the day we were there was open to 10:00 P.M.!

We really enjoyed the museum's large collection of Ancient Egyptian Artifacts/artwork. We also liked the Impressionistic paintings that the musuem had on display. It has two great Van Gogh's and it also has beautiful works from Cezanne and Monet. This museum also has a large number of works from Dutch and English artists from the 1600's and 1700's. The museum has some American and modern art but has a much stronger collection of Eurpoean Art from 1600-1900.

We were a little bit disappointed in the glass pavillion. We found the buidling not to be very impressive at all and the collection not as extensive as expected. In addition, the space was kind of under utilized. There was one exhibit that had glass from ancient times to modern times but none of the glass works in the cases were labeled or described. The exhibit did say there was an installation in progress, so maybe it will improve in the future. The only other exhibit was of modern glass jewerly which we found to be not very interesting.

We felt the glass pavillion would have been a total flop but it was saved by the "hotshop" where they had glass blowing demonstrations every hour the day we were there. It was extremely interesting to see how glass was made and how you can work with glass to make different forms.

Overall, we felt the Toledo Museum of Art is a great value and worth the trip. A great art weekend could be had by taking one day to visit the Toledo Museum of Art and driving 45 minutes north to Detroit to visit the Detroit Insitute of Art on another day.