Small Wonders: County Museum Opens New Installations : Collections: LACMA unveils ancient glass and European medals, two underappreciated but illuminating art forms.

When the Los Angeles County Museum of Art opens its doors today, the public will get its first look at two small worlds of intimate delight. One new gallery features ancient glass donated by Los Angeles collectors Hans and Varya Cohn; the other displays the museum’s collection of European medals.

Such small objects tend to be overlooked in any museum’s grand scheme of paintings and sculpture, but each piece of glass and every last medal in LACMA’s new installations has received special treatment calculated to entice visitors who think they couldn’t care less about such things.

“We arranged it so that each piece would look its best. That’s really our goal,” said curator Nancy Thomas, who has supervised an intricate installation of 110 glass works dating from around 600 BC to AD 700. The six-month job called for “painful editing decisions,” she said, as well as the design and construction of new display cases on the second floor of the Ahmanson Building.

The delicate glass works are literally shown in the best possible light. Innovative, custom-designed fiber-optic lighting allows each piece to be dramatically lit without endangering the fragile material. “These ancient pieces are time bombs, set to go off. Sometimes, even with the most careful handling, they just shatter,” Thomas explained. The museum has been lucky so far, she said, but the new lighting system is expected to lengthen the vessels’ lives.

While conventional lighting emits ultraviolet rays and heat that can make glass increasingly brittle, fiber-optic pinpoints of light, channeled through flexible cables from a single bulb, emit no heat at all, said Richard Steinberg, who designed the system. This allows objects to be brightly illuminated while the display cases are sealed against dust.

Beginning with tiny, striped vessels of core-formed glass--created by wrapping colored-glass threads around a core of clay or sand--Thomas has arranged the rare examples of ancient glass according to technique. There are mold-pressed bowls, early pieces of blown glass and objects that combine blown forms with imprints from molds or tools. Early glass artists sometimes created patterns by trailing threads over molten objects, making raised designs or airy lattices that have clung, miraculously, to the lips of vases for more than 1,000 years. Some of these handiworks served everyday functions; others held precious perfumes and oils; still others were used by pilgrims on sacred occasions.

By virtue of age, rarity and beauty, each object on display is precious, but four “luxury” items are highlighted as masterpieces: a beaker decorated with a scene from a Greek comedy and a bottle depicting a sea monster and mythological figures in a marine setting, both from Syria or Egypt; a beaker with four deities from Syria-Palestine or west Asia; and a bowl engraved with an eight-pointed star from the eastern Mediterranean region.

All the works are among more than 250 objects given to LACMA since 1983 by museum trustee Hans Cohn and his wife, Varya. A new installation of European glass from the Cohn donation, featuring 72 examples that trace major trends in glass making, is scheduled to open in the fall.

While the glass gallery sparkles with translucent color and form, the new medals gallery exudes the solid elegance of a Continental gentleman’s den. Hung with tapestries and warmly furnished with wood and glass cases, the cozy room invites visitors to inspect both sides of medals and see related metal sculptures in the round.

“I wanted to get back to the original spirit of museums, the idea of a fantasy world where you can go back into any period of time, a place to escape and see beautiful things,” said curator Mary Levkoff. She has created the escape of her dreams in a former storeroom, also on the Ahmanson Building’s second floor. With meticulous attention to detail and the knowledge that medals are not a widely appreciated art form, Levkoff settled on a roughly chronological layout that tracks the history of medal making with intriguing side trips that explore special themes.

Those who lack patience or time to study all 150 pieces can take in the display one vitrine at a time. If, that is, they can turn their backs on a world-class collection of medals that--by turns--educates, enchants and pleases artistically.

The history of medals is nothing less than the history of portraiture and sculpture from the end of the 15th Century to the present day, according to Levkoff. Many 19th-Century artists got their start as medalists, when the French Salon held annual competitions, while others have specialized in medals, she said.

The museum’s collection runs from 15th-Century Italian work to a 1967 depiction of Leda (a figure from Greek mythology), and includes works by Antoine Louis Barye, a 19th-Century French sculptor of animals. The collection is particularly rich in French 17th- and 18th-Century medals, but it covers a wide swath of history including Belle Epoque, Art Nouveau and Art Deco styles.

Medals are often confused with coins, but they are actually an independent art form, often commemorating historic occasions. While most pieces on display are small metal discs cast in relief (with raised sculptural forms projecting from the background on both sides), there are also rectangular plaques, pendants, game counters, badges and a few bronze busts and other sculptures related to the medals.

Subject matter ranges from the courtly to the mundane while recording social history and allowing for individual wit. LACMA’s medals include exquisite portraits of French dukes and duchesses in powdered wigs, as well as an English tribute to growers of rhubarb. A 1807 medal from Sierra Leone marks the end of the slave trade and proclaims “All men are equal” in Arabic script. A charming piece by Paul Jouve portrays a baboon cradling a baboon mummy on one side of a medal, while apes on the reverse side suffer paroxysms of grief.

The museum’s entire medal collection contains about 1,300 pieces and is among America’s most extensive and best, Levkoff said. About 600 pieces were purchased in 1979 at an undisclosed price from New York collector David Daniels. Since then, museum benefactor Michael Hall and other donors have given the museum about 700 additional medals.