Each form represents population change over time in the city it hangs above. Longer forms are older cities, shorter forms are newer ones. The top of the piece, where the forms are widest, documents the population of the city around 2017. On the wall, graphics of each city are shown chronologically, presenting a different take on the same information.

Designed after extensive research and consultation with historians and statisticians, the piece is a stark reminder of what information we have, what information is lost, and how the clean lines of data can obscure the complex forces that have given shape to the world we live in. Because encoded within the refined forms of Global Cities are the many devastations that have caused global migrations: settler colonialism, the slave trade, world wars, global trade, population growth, climate change, and other phenomena. And just as important are the Indigenous histories that hover invisibly below the clear tails of these pieces, the often long-standing settlements in these areas that formed the true roots of many of the cities we live in today.

The piece was made by Norwood Viviano, a Michigan-based sculptor whose work investigates the history of industry and its effect on the population and geography of the urban landscape. Global Cities is the second in a series of hanging glass forms designed to depict population change in cities. The first, Cities: Departure and Deviation, was featured in my exhibition SPRAWL [LINK to Sprawl!], co-curated with Anna Walker and now held in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Global Cities debuted at the Grand Rapids Art Museum before being featured in the prestigious exhibition Visions and Revisions: Renwick Invitational 2016 held at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery.  It was among the first pieces I added to the collection of The Corning Museum of Glass.