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Last Friday, April 7, the National Liberty Museum in Philadelphia debuted a tendentious new art exhibit. The exhibit, called “The Treachery of Images,” features over 50 glass-blown bongs.
But despite the intended use of bongs, Gwen Borowsky, CEO of the National Liberty Museum, maintains that the exhibit is not about getting high.
“A lot of people who buy these pieces buy them as pieces of art and not to smoke out of,” Borowsky stated. “These are pieces that you wouldn’t want to put a match to.”
Meegan Coll, the museum’s director of glass, agrees.
“Some of these glass pipes you can’t tell if they’re pipes or pieces of art,” Meegan Coll said in an interview with Fox News. “If you take a deeper look at these pieces you’ll see that they are amazing pieces of art as well as functional smoking devices. You really have to appreciate the art and the skill it takes to execute the creation of these pieces.”
So far, the bongs have been quite the hit (no pun intended). Borowsky says that the glass pieces have already generated interest from numerous buyers, despite their high (again, no pun unintended) price tag.
One of the most expensive pieces is called “Freija” and it is valued at $250,000. But that’s not unusual for this type of exhibit. In fact, most of the bongs on display are going for tens of thousands of dollars.
“This is a real underground movement and these artists in the past were worried that they would be arrested if they used their real names,” Coll explained. “It’s a tight-knit community and they are excited to see their work on display in a setting of a museum or gallery that one wouldn’t think would show this kind of stuff.”
The exhibit runs from April 7 to May 7, with high attendance numbers expected on 4/20.