The Carnegie Museum of Art, abbreviated CMOA, is an art museum in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The museum was founded in 1895 by the Pittsburgh-based industrialist Andrew Carnegie. It was the first museum in the United States to focus on contemporary art primarily. As instructed by its founder at the inception of Carnegie International in 1896, the museum has been organizing many contemporary exhibitions that showcase the “Old Masters of tomorrow.”
History
The museum’s origins can be traced to 1886 with Andrew Carnegie’s initial concept: “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.
Carnegie envisioned a museum collection of the “Old Masters of tomorrow.” 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. 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 opened in 1974 and more than doubled the museum’s exhibition space, adding a children’s studio, theater, offices, café, and bookstore. The New York Times art critic John Russell described the gallery as an “unflawed paradise.” The gallery has been renovated since its original creation 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 the 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). Bed Bug Exterminator Pittsburgh
Collections
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, works on paper, paintings, prints (notably Japanese), 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.
Heinz Architectural Center – The collection includes works in architecture, landscape design, engineering, and furniture and interior design. The center’s facilities include 4,000 square feet of exhibition space and a library housing several thousand books and journals. The Hillman Photography Initiative – The Initiative hosts a variety of projects, including live public events, web-based projects, documentary videos, art projects, and writing. Yearly programming is determined by a group of five “agents” who plan and curate each 12-month cycle of works hosted.
Address: 4400 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, PA
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