BIOGRAPHY:

Born in New York City in 1926, Thomas Scharman Buechner attended Princeton University, the Art Student's League in New York and the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris.  He studied Old Master painting techniques in Amsterdam with M.M. van Dantzig, a pupil of Max Doerner's.

Subsequently employed as a designer and graphic artist on the Governor's staff in Puerto Rico, he specialized in exhibition design and was later employed by the Display Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The first Director of The Corning Museum of Glass (1950-1960) and then director of the Brooklyn Museum (1960-1971), Buechner simultaneously worked as an illustrator for the Chicago Tribune's and the Washington Post's "Book World" and did cassette jackets for operas a major interest.

In 1972, he became President of Steuben Glass, chairman of the Corning Glass Works Foundation, and President of The Corning Museum of Glass.  He helped to establish the Rockwell Museum in 1976, serving as its president for ten years.  In 1985 he became a Vice President of Corning Glass Works.

As author and lecturer, Buechner is well known to glass scholars, artists and collectors.  He wrote the glass section for the Encyclopedia Britannica and founded both the Journal of Glass Studies and the New Glass Review.  (His best known book is Norman Rockwell, Artist and Illustrator, published by Abrams in 1971.)

His paintings have been acquired by museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian's National Museum of American Art. 

Biography via AskArt submitted by Erich Asperschlager, studio assistant to Thomas Buechner