| Carnegie Museum of Art | |
|---|---|
Rachel Whiteread work in the Hall of Sculpture. |
|
|
Location of CMA in Pennsylvania.
|
|
| Established | 1896 |
| Location | Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania |
| Type | Encyclopedic Art Museum |
| Website | www.cmoa.org |
The Carnegie Museum of Art, located in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is an art museum founded in 1895 by the Pittsburgh-based industrialist Andrew Carnegie.[1] The museum holds a distinguished collection of contemporary art, including film and video works.
Contents |
The museum's origins can be traced to 1886 with Andrew Carnegie's initial concept:[2] "I am thinking of incorporating with the plan for a library that of an art-gallery in which shall be preserved a record of the progress and development of pictorial art in America". Dedicated on November 5, 1895, the art gallery was initially housed in the Carnegie Libraries of Pittsburgh Main Branch in Oakland. As 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. The museum received a major expansion in 1907 with the addition of the Hall of Architecture, Hall of Sculpture, and Bruce Galleries, with funds again provided by Carnegie.[3]
Under the directorship of Leon Arkus, the Sarah Mellon Scaife Gallery (125,000 square feet) was built as an addition to the existing Carnegie Institute. Designed by architect Edward Larrabee Barnes, it first opened in 1974 and more than doubled the museum's exhibition space, plus added a children's studio, theater, offices, café, and bookstore.[4]. The New York Times art critic John Russell described the gallery as an "unflawed paradise." The gallery has been renovated several times since its original creation, most recently in 2004.
Today the museum 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 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. Its permanent collection comprises 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.
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.
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. The Carnegie Museum of Art was named 5th most child-friendly art museum in the U.S. by Child magazine.
|
||||||||