As the summer comes to an end, a new beginning will arise from the Toledo Museum of Art on Sunday with its new building named the Glass Pavilion.

The city of Toledo is known as the Glass City because of its history in the glass industry and “this is the centerpiece of the Glass City,” Don Bacigalupi, the TMA director, said.

The museum will house more than 5,000 pieces of glass art.

The Glass Pavilion is a separate section of the Toledo Museum of Art and is located across the street from the main building.

Even though the glass artwork will be located in the Glass Pavilion, both buildings will hold exhibitions.

“We are not segregating the glass out. The museum has always distributed the glass into the galleries, it’s just that they (the glass art) are sort of living here,” Jutta-Annette Page said, Curator of Glass.

The building is made from almost all glass and from the outside looks simple.

However, it does catch the eye because it literally is a glass building. But once inside, one can see the sophistication of the details of the glass walls as one room leads to another.

“The building is unique in construction and conception,” Bacigalupi said. “Nothing like this has ever been built here or arguably anywhere. The building is enormously complex in its design.”

The Glass Pavilion was built to contain beautiful art and galleries that need to be kept at precise temperatures in order to protect the works of art, Bacigalupi added.

“At the same time, the building contains studios and hot shops where the furnaces fire 2,400 degrees.”

The hot shops are where artists make the glass and at the Glass Pavilion the public can watch them do so.

“Those two things in the same space is a very difficult thing to accomplish,” Bacigalupi said.

Not only is the building itself a work of art but also the location was intended to connect with the beauty of the park that surrounds the museum.

“One thing we wanted to create with the transparency was the relation between the garden and the building,” Ryue Nishizawa, design architect, said.

“The building is right in the middle of the park and we thought it would be nice to have this connection.”

Fellow design architect, Kazuyo Sejima added, “We want people to be able to enjoy the art, this space and the trees.”

Both the beauty of the surrounding nature and glass art coincide with the Glass Pavilion.

“We’ve always approached this project from the point of view of it making connections. Connections between the public and the art and connections between the art and the process of making art,” Terry Beamsley said, TMA Assistant Director and Project Manager.

“We are very, very aware of how important working with your surrounding is. Our mission is to integrate art into the lives of people and the building very much fulfills that,” Beamsley added.

The Glass Pavilion opens with a public inauguration at 11 a.m.