Red Hot Auction & Gala

The Museum of Glass Red Hot Auction & Gala is the Museum’s signature annual fundraiser, featuring live and silent auctions, the presentation of the Museum’s Coney Awards to donating artists, gourmet dinner and cocktails, and live glassblowing in the Hot Shop. Both celebratory and mission-driven, the event raises critical support for the Museum’s exhibitions, Hot Shop residencies, and educational programs while placing artists and their stories at the center of the experience.

Save the Date for Saturday, September 19, 2026!

We invite our community of collectors, artists, and patrons to join us for a Venetian-inspired evening in celebration of the museum’s radiant future. Your formal invitation is coming soon. In the meantime, please mark your calendars for September 19 (or secure your tickets and tables now by clicking below!).

Purchase Tickets and Tables →

Every Red Hot Auction & Gala features an after party with live glassblowing by the Grand Prize Coney Award winner of the previous year’s donating artists. The artist will make one piece to be auctioned live off-the-pipe!

Red Hot After Party Featured Artist

Dante Marioni

Dante Marioni burst onto the international glass scene at the age of 19 with a signature style that has been described as the purest of classical forms executed in glass by an American glassblower. His amphoras, vases, and ewers are derived from Greek and Etruscan prototypes, yet they are imaginatively and sometimes whimsically reinterpreted. His impossibly elongated, sinuous shapes are made with bright and saturated contrasting colors. Marioni’s sophisticated glass objects evoke the rich tradition of classical Mediterranean pottery and bronzes, and of Marioni’s training in centuries-old Venetian glassblowing techniques with some of the greatest masters in contemporary glass.

Marioni first held a blowpipe at the age of nine. By the time he was 15, he was working after school at one of the first cooperative hotshops and showrooms, The Glass Eye, in Seattle Washington. Although he loved glassblowing, making production studio glass felt limiting. Around the same time he met up with Benjamin Moore, another studio glass pioneer, and watched Moore make a perfectly symmetrical, on-center glass form inspired by Venetian glass. It had a dramatic and lasting effect on Marioni, who had not previously seen this type of glassblowing. Moore soon became a great mentor and friend. He also studied with other well-known studio glass pioneers, such as Fritz Dreisbach and Richard Marquis, who is widely recognized for his unique interpretations of Venetian decorative techniques.

In 1983, Moore introduced Marioni to Lino Tagliapietra, the legendary maestro who traveled from Murano to teach young American glassblowers at the Pilchuck Glass School in Washington state. At the age of 23, Marioni had his first sell-out gallery show in Seattle that featured his Whopper vases. This series introduced his signature, monumental forms and two-color style, and earned him a prestigious Louis Comfort Tiffany Fellowship. After two decades of experimentation, Marioni now creates a diverse range of tall, iconic forms with surface treatments such as murrine (mosaic) and reticello (air bubbles within a net pattern) in an ever-changing array of vibrant colors.

Sponsorship Opportunities

Museum of Glass invites you to become a sponsor of Red Hot 2026! Since its inception in 2002, the Red Hot Auction & Gala has raised more than $11 million in support of Museum of Glass. As a sponsor of Red Hot, you will have the unique opportunity to market your company to our high-profile audience of business and community leaders from the greater Northwest region and to host your guests at our most anticipated event of the year. Click below to learn more about sponsorship or contact Lindsay Carlisle, Development Events Manager, for more details.

Sponsorship Details →

Moments from Red Hot 2025

The Museum of Glass Story

View the 2025 Auction Catalog

Thank you to our 2025 Sponsors!

Museum of Glass is immensely grateful to you all for fueling this evening and for your ongoing support of our mission to ignite creativity, fuel discovery, and enrich lives through glass and glassmaking. Thank you for investing in the arts and in your community.