Rita McBride, Artifacts (C. W. D.), 2015, excavated Tiffany glass shards installed within a PK-30 System, The Tiffany School, Queens

Artifact is an aluminum grid structure created by Rita McBride, with twenty-one panels of Tiffany glass shards, occupying the “Stair-atorium” at PS 315Q; it serves to order and cherish the history of the site and the artifacts found there.

Shards with similar colors and tonalities were sorted into one group, shards of similar sizes and textures into another. It is typical and legitimate to unite objects by qualities of sameness, but it is also vital to consider difference and variability, both within the category and as a way to determine the category itself.  

These historic Tiffany glass shards will tie people and things together in their life cycle: raw material – design – production – distribution – consumption – discardment – re-discovery. The students, teachers, and parents who will inhabit the new PS 315Q will become part of this complex and mysterious process, the rich relationship between people and objects.