Carnegie Museum of Art
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| Carnegie Museum of Art | |
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  Location of CMA in Pennsylvania.
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| Established | 1896 |
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| Location | Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania |
| Type | Encyclopedic Art Museum |
| Website | www.cmoa.org |
Coordinates: 40°26′37″N 79°56′56″W / 40.4436903°N 79.948976°W
The Carnegie Museum of Art, located in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was founded by the Pittsburgh-based industrialist Andrew Carnegie in 1896[1] The museum holds a distinguished collection of contemporary art, including film and video works.
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[edit] History
When Andrew Carnegie envisioned a museum collection consisting of the "Old Masters of tomorrow", the Carnegie Museum of Art became, arguably, the first museum of modern art in the United States. Initially housed in the Carnegie Libraries of Pittsburgh Main Branch in Oakland
Founded in 1895, today it continues Carnegie's love of contemporary art by staging the Carnegie International every few years. Numerous significant works from the Internationals have been acquired for museum's 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). The marble Hall of Sculpture replicates the interior of the Parthenon. 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. The Heinz Architectural Center, opened as part of the museum in 1993, is dedicated to the collection, study, and exhibition of architectural drawings and models.
Under the directorship of Leon Arkus the Sarah Mellon Scaife Gallery was built as an addition to the existing building of Carnegie Institute. New York Times art critic John Russell described the gallery, designed by architect Edward Larrabee Barnes, as an "unflawed paradise."
[edit] Permanent Collection
The museum has a permanent collection of roughly 35,000 works and includes European and American decorative arts from the late seventeenth century to the present, works on paper, paintings, prints (notably Japanese prints), sculptures and installations. The museum has notably strong collections of both aluminum artifacts and chairs. Approximately 1,800 works are on view at any given time.
[edit] Teenie Harris Archive
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. The museum is working with a Teenie Harris Advisory Committee identify the photographs. Many of these images have been catalogued and digitized and are available online via the Carnegie Museum of Art Collections Search.
[edit] Departments
The museum's curatorial departments include: Fine Arts (Contemporary Art, Works on Paper), Decorative Arts, Architecture, and Photography. The museum presents as many as 15 changing exhibitions annually.
[edit] Hall of Architecture
In the late Victorian era, plaster casts of outstanding classical, ancient, and medieval works were mass-produced by various vendors. Just a few museums, like Carnegie Museum of Art, went to extraordinary lengths to develop their own large, unique casts. The West Portal of Saint-Gilles-du-Gard, paid for by Andrew Carnegie on the recommendation of art experts, is one of a kind, and is arguably the largest architectural cast ever made.
[edit] Programs
Over the past 75 years, more than 100,000 children of all ages have attended Saturday art classes in the galleries of Carnegie Museum of Art. Alumni of the program include Andy Warhol, photographer Duane Michals, and contemporary artist Philip Pearlstein.
Carnegie Museum of Art was named 5th most child-friendly art museum in the U.S. by Child magazine.
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