Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh

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Carnegie Institute and Library
Carnegie Music Hall Pittsburgh.JPG
The Carnegie Institute serves as the headquarters of the Carnegie Museums
Location4400 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Coordinates 40°26′34″N79°57′2″W / 40.44278°N 79.95056°W / 40.44278; -79.95056
Area9.5 acres (3.8 ha)
Built1895
Architectural styleBeaux Arts
Part of Schenley Farms Historic District (ID83002213)
NRHP reference No. 79002158 [1]
Significant dates
Added to NRHPMarch 30, 1979
Designated CPJuly 22, 1983 [1]
Designated PHLF1970 [2]

Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh is a nonprofit organization that operates four museums in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The organization is headquartered in the Carnegie Institute and Library complex in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh. The Carnegie Institute complex, which includes the original museum, recital hall, and library, was added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 30, 1979.

Contents

Portfolio

Two of the Carnegie museums, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and the Carnegie Museum of Art, are both located in the Carnegie Institute and Library complex in Oakland, a landmark building listed on the National Register of Historic Places (ref #79002158, added 1979). It also houses the Carnegie Music Hall and the main branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. [3]

Motto "Free to the people" above the Carnegie Library entrance Carnegie Library Free to the People.jpg
Motto "Free to the people" above the Carnegie Library entrance

Andrew Carnegie donated the library and the buildings. With the goal of inspiring people to do good for themselves and their communities, the terms for donations required communities to support them in exchange for the building and initial investment by Carnegie. The words "free to the people" inscribed above the entrance of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh illustrate his vision. [4] The other two museums, The Andy Warhol Museum and the Kamin Science Center, are located in separate facilities on Pittsburgh's North Shore. [5]

Andy Warhol Museum

Andy Warhol Museum Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, 2015-06-17, 01.jpg
Andy Warhol Museum

Opened on May 15, 1994, the Andy Warhol Museum is the first museum to exclusively focus on an American postwar artist. [6] The building which houses the Andy Warhol Museum was originally built in 1911 for industrial purposes, but was redesigned for the museum by architect Richard Gluckman. The museum currently has seven floors of gallery and exhibition space as well as an underground education studio and conservation lab. [7]

Warhol's primary artistic technique was silkscreen pop art, which he gained notoriety for in the early 1960s. The serial images derived from the culture's consumerism and conception of beauty are reified in a form of art which represent the identity of constituents in postwar American society. [8] Images used by Warhol, which have made him famous for his contributions to pop art, include celebrities and consumables such as Marilyn Monroe and The Campbell's soup can.

The museum's collection includes over 4,000 Warhol art works in all mediapaintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculptures, and installation; the entire Andy Warhol Video Collection, 228 four-minute Screen Tests, and 45 other films by Warhol; and extensive archives, including Warhol's Time Capsules. While dedicated to Andy Warhol, the museum also hosts many exhibits by contemporary artists. [9]

Carnegie Museum of Art

Carnegie Museum of Art's Sarah Scaife Gallery annex. Designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes and Associates. Carnegie Museum of Art.JPG
Carnegie Museum of Art's Sarah Scaife Gallery annex. Designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes and Associates.

When Andrew Carnegie envisioned a museum collection consisting of the "Old Masters of tomorrow," the Carnegie Museum of Art arguably became the first museum of modern art in the United States. The museum was founded as the Department of Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute in 1895. The name was changed to its current name in [11] 1986.

Today the museum continues showcasing contemporary art by staging the Carnegie International exhibition every three to five years. Numerous works from the International exhibitions have been acquired for the museums' permanent collection including Winslow Homer's The Wreck (1896) and James A. McNeill Whistler's Arrangement in Black: Portrait of Señor Pablo de Sarasate (1884). [12] [13]

The Hall of Sculpture, constructed in white marble, replicates the interior of the Parthenon. [14] The Hall of Architecture contains the largest collection of plaster casts of architectural masterpieces in America and one of the three largest in the world. Opened in 1974, the Sarah Scaife Galleries Annex was designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes and Associates. The Sarah Scaife Foundation gift nearly doubled the exhibition square footage. The modernist addition was designed to not compete with the existing building. Trustee James L. Winokur says of architect Edward Larrabee Barnes, "He kept the old building out front. He was not terribly concerned about getting credit, just concerned about doing the job right, and he did do it right." [10]

The Heinz Architectural Center, opened as part of the museum in 1993, is dedicated to the collection, study, and exhibition of architectural drawings, prints and models. [11] Most of these are from the 19th and 20th centuries.

In 2001 the museum acquired the archive of African-American photographer Charles "Teenie" Harris, consisting of approximately 80,000 photographic negatives spanning from the 1930s to the 1970s. Many of these images have been cataloged and digitized.

The museum's permanent collection includes European and American decorative arts from the late seventeenth century to the present, works on paper, paintings, prints (most notably Japanese prints), sculptures and installations. [11]

Carnegie Museum of Natural History

Carnegie Museum of Natural History Carnegie Museum of Natural History 01.JPG
Carnegie Museum of Natural History

Opened alongside the Carnegie Museum of Art in 1895, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History is currently home to over twenty million objects and artifacts. Carnegie oversaw the collecting from 1895 to 1907 and it reflected his ideas of evolutionary development. [4] [15]

Most notably, it houses a collection of 230 dinosaur fossils—including the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex known to date—as well as exhibits such as Hillman Hall of Minerals and Gems, Alcoa Foundation Hall of American Indians, and Walton Hall of Ancient Egypt. The museum's Powdermill Nature Reserve was established in 1956 to serve as a field station for long-term studies of natural populations, and now forms the core of the museum's Center for Biodiversity and Ecosystems. Research teams that included Carnegie scientists have made discoveries such as Puijila darwini and Hadrocodium wui . [16] [17]

Kamin Science Center

Carnegie Science Center Carnegie Science Center.jpg
Carnegie Science Center

Opened in 1991, but with a history that dates to October 24, 1939, the Kamin Science Center is the most visited museum in Pittsburgh. [9] The Kamin Science Center houses the Buhl Planetarium & Observatory, the Rangos Giant Cinema Theater, and a number of temporary and permanent exhibits, including Highmark SportsWorks, the Miniature Railroad & Village, and the Robot Hall of Fame. [9]

On February 21, 1990, Pennsylvania Senator John Heinz introduced Senate Bill S. 2151, which allowed the USS Requin, a World War II submarine, to be transferred as an exhibit for the science center. The purpose of the exhibit is for visitors to learn how people lived and worked on the boat.

The Buhl Planetarium and larger Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh merged in 1987, leading to an October 1989 groundbreaking on the newly-named Carnegie Science Center building. A large donation by the Kamin family led to the science center's renaming in 2024. [18]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andy Warhol</span> American artist, film director, and producer (1928–1987)

Andy Warhol was an American visual artist, film director and producer. A leading figure in the pop art movement, Warhol is considered one of the most important American artists of the second half of the 20th century. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, advertising, and celebrity culture that flourished by the 1960s, and span a variety of media, including painting, silkscreening, photography, film, and sculpture. Some of his best-known works include the silkscreen paintings Campbell's Soup Cans (1962) and Marilyn Diptych (1962), the experimental films Empire (1964) and Chelsea Girls (1966), and the multimedia events known as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966–67).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Walker Art Center</span> Gallery in Minneapolis, opened 1927

The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the U.S.: together with the adjacent Minneapolis Sculpture Garden and Cowles Conservatory, it has an annual attendance of around 700,000 visitors. The museum's permanent collection includes over 13,000 modern and contemporary art pieces, including books, costumes, drawings, media works, paintings, photography, prints, and sculpture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago</span> Art museum in Chicago, Illinois

The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago is a contemporary art museum near Water Tower Place in downtown Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The museum, which was established in 1967, is one of the world's largest contemporary art venues. The museum's collection is composed of thousands of objects of Post-World War II visual art. The museum is run gallery-style, with individually curated exhibitions throughout the year. Each exhibition may be composed of temporary loans, pieces from their permanent collection, or a combination of the two.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carnegie Museum of Art</span> Art museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

The Carnegie Museum of Art is an art museum in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The museum was originally known as the Department of Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute and was formerly located at what is now the Main Branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. The museum's first gallery was opened for public use on November 5, 1895. Over the years, the gallery vastly increased in size, with a new building on Forbes Avenue built in 1907. In 1963, the name was officially changed to Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute. The size of the gallery has tripled over time, and it was officially renamed in 1986 to "Carnegie Museum of Art" to indicate it clearly as one of the four Carnegie Museums.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carnegie Science Center</span> Science museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

The Carnegie Science Center, soon to be The Daniel G. and Carole L. Kamin Science Center, is one of the four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is located in the Chateau neighborhood. It is located across the street from Acrisure Stadium.

The Carnegie International is a North American exhibition of contemporary art from around the globe. It was first organized at the behest of industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie on November 5, 1896, in Pittsburgh. Carnegie established the International to educate and inspire the public as well as to promote international cooperation and understanding. He intended the International to provide a periodic sample of contemporary art from which Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Art could enrich its permanent collection.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Birmingham Museum of Art</span> Municipal art museum in Alabama, US

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robotic art</span> Any artwork that employs some form of robotic or automated technology

Robotic art is any artwork that employs some form of robotic or automated technology. There are many branches of robotic art, one of which is robotic installation art, a type of installation art that is programmed to respond to viewer interactions, by means of computers, sensors and actuators. The future behavior of such installations can therefore be altered by input from either the artist or the participant, which differentiates these artworks from other types of kinetic art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Columbia Museum of Art</span> Museum in South Carolina, United States

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Smart Museum of Art</span> Art museum in Chicago, Illinois, US

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edward Larrabee Barnes</span> American architect

Edward Larrabee Barnes was an American architect. His work was characterized by the "fusing [of] Modernism with vernacular architecture and understated design." Barnes was best known for his adherence to strict geometry, simple monolithic shapes and attention to material detail. Among his best-known projects are the Haystack School, Christian Theological Seminary, Dallas Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center, 599 Lexington Avenue, the Thurgood Marshall Federal Judiciary Building, and the IBM Building at 590 Madison Avenue.

Robert C. Wilburn is the director of Carnegie Mellon University Heinz College's Washington, DC campus as well as a Distinguished Service Professor at the college. Prior to this position he was the first president and Chief Executive Officer of the Gettysburg Foundation. He served as president and CEO of the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh and as president of Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Under his leadership, the number of customers, members, donors, and volunteers increased sharply within each organization. The merger of the Buhl Science Center with the Carnegie Institute and the construction of a new $40 million Kamin Science Center are among his notable accomplishments. While at the Carnegie Institute, Wilburn also contributed to the founding of the Andy Warhol Museum by negotiating gifts of more than a thousand paintings and drawings from the Warhol and DIA Foundations and by raising funds to secure and renovate a historic, seven-story building in downtown Pittsburgh. The Warhol Museum is probably the largest museum in the world dedicated to a single artist and may have been the largest gift ever given to a museum at one time, in value.

Associated Artists of Pittsburgh (AAP) is the oldest, and largest nonprofit visual arts membership organization in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States and the oldest continuously exhibiting visual arts organization in America.

Matt Wrbican (1959–2019) was an American archivist and authority on the life of the artist Andy Warhol. He earned his BFA in Painting and MFA in Intermedia/Electronic Art from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), where he studied with Bruce Breland. He began working with the Warhol Archive in 1991 in New York City and became Chief Archivist of The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. He managed the Archive and Warhol's Time Capsules for more than two decades at the Warhol Museum, where he unpacked, processed, preserved, and documented an estimated 500,000 objects. His last book is A is for Archive: Warhol's World from A to Z. He also exhibited his artwork at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts and Galleries. He died on Saturday, June 1, 2019, after a four-year battle with brain cancer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Andy Warhol Museum</span> Museum dedicated to Andy Warhols art

The Andy Warhol Museum is located on the North Shore of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the United States. It is the largest museum in North America dedicated to a single artist. The museum holds an extensive permanent collection of art and archives from the Pittsburgh-born pop art icon Andy Warhol.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Grey Art Museum</span> University art museum in New York, New York

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The National Guitar Museum (NGM) is a museum dedicated to the guitar's history, evolution, and cultural impact; and to promoting and preserving the guitar's legacy. The NGM addresses the history of the guitar as it has evolved from ancient stringed instruments to the wide variety of instruments created over the past 200 years. It focuses on the guitar's inventors, innovators, and influential players, along with the science and technology behind the guitar's construction, shape, and sound.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Longview Museum of Fine Arts</span> Art museum in Texas, United States

The Longview Museum of Fine Arts (LMFA) is an art museum in downtown Longview, Texas. It was founded in 1958 by the Junior Service League of Longview. Since 1998, it has been on Tyler Street in downtown Longview.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dia Bridgehampton</span> Dan Flavin art museum in Bridgehampton, New York

Dia Bridgehampton, previously known as the Dan Flavin Art Institute, is a museum in Bridgehampton, New York run by the Dia Art Foundation. Originally built in 1909 as a firehouse, the building was sold to the First Baptist Church of Bridgehampton in 1924. The church renovated and expanded the building in 1947 and used it as a place of worship through the mid-1970s. The congregation grew and, in 1979, they sold the building to the Dia Art Foundation. Dia renovated the building into a single-artist museum for Dan Flavin as well as a rotating exhibition space. The building re-opened in 1983 as the Dan Flavin Art Institute.

Aaronel deRoy Gruber was an American painter, sculptor, photographer and artist. Her works are included in several museum collections and over her career her work was a part of both solo and group exhibitions including a retrospective exhibition at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art in 2013. In 2000 she cofounded the Irving and Aaronel deRoy Gruber Foundation with her husband Irving.

References

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