Overview
Carnegie Museum of Art, founded in 1895 by Andrew Carnegie, is one of the components of Carnegie Institute,
which also includes The Andy Warhol Museum, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, and Carnegie Science Center. Carnegie Museum of Art serves a Pittsburgh-area audience of 2.2 million people as well as visitors from eastern Ohio, northern West Virginia, and western Pennsylvania. During the past ten years, the museum's audience has also become increasingly global, thanks in part to the Carnegie International exhibition, one of the most important forums in the world today for the presentation of contemporary art.
 

Collections
While most art museums founded at the turn of the century focused on collections of Old Masters, Andrew Carnegie envisioned a collection consisting of "the Old Masters of tomorrow." In 1896, he initiated a series of exhibitions of contemporary art and proposed that the museum's paintings collection be formed through purchases from this series. Carnegie thereby founded what is arguably the first museum of modern art in the United States.
Early acquisitions of works by such artists as Winslow Homer, James McNeill Whistler, and Camille Pissarro laid
the foundation for a collection that today is distinguished in American art from the mid-19th century
to the present, French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, and significant late-20th-
century works.

During its history, the museum has extended its collecting focus to include European and American decorative arts from the late 17th century to the present. Architect-designed objects figure prominently among recent acquisitions and complement the Museum's newest curatorial department, The Heinz Architectural Center, which is dedicated to the collection, study, and exhibition of architectural drawings and models. In addition, the Museum's collection includes Asian art (particularly Japanese prints) and African art. One of the first museums to include film and video in its collection, Carnegie Museum of Art actively collects and presents work in these mediums.
 

Programs
The Museum has an active program of approximately 15 exhibitions a year, including presentations of works from
the permanent collection, temporary exhibitions that the Museum originates, and traveling exhibitions. A core of
ongoing educational programs for a wide range of audiences is amplified throughout by programs,
activities, and publications on specific topics or exhibitions; formats vary in order to appeal to many
different learning styles and levels of familiarity with art. These educational opportunities include school
programs for teachers, parents, and students (both inside and outside the museum); docent-led gallery talks;
children, youth, and family programs; lectures and symposia; workshops; presentations by exhibiting artists;
outreach talks; museum studio classes for adults; gallery guides; and collection-based curriculum materials.
 Other vital museum services and programs include conservation (the Museum's laboratory was renovated and
enlarged and its operations partially endowed in 1991) and publications.
 

Museum Buildings
Carnegie Institute's original Renaissance-style building, designed by Longfellow, Alden & Harlow between 1893 and 1895, contained a library, music hall, and galleries for art and natural history. In 1907 a major addition by
Alden & Harlow provided new quarters for the Department of Fine Arts and the Department of the Museum, now the Museum of Art and the Museum of Natural History respectively. Andrew Carnegie's "palace of culture"
covered nearly five acres in a section of the city that would become the heart of the University of Pittsburgh
and Carnegie Mellon University campuses.

The expansion of Carnegie Institute provided art galleries and halls for exhibiting casts of sculpture and
architectural elements, as well as an opulent music-hall foyer that rises 45 feet to an elaborate carved and
gilded baroque ceiling atop colossal columns of green Tinos marble from Greece. The Hall of Sculpture is
crafted of Pentelic marble from the same Greek quarries that supplied the stone for the Parthenon. Adorned with
casts from the classical era, the two-story columned hall replicates the interior of the Temple of Athena on the
Acropolis in Athens. The Hall of Architecture, created when collections of architectural plaster casts were
numerous, contains one of the three largest cast collections still on exhibit in the world. Included are
more than 140 casts of doorways, columns, monuments, and architectural details representing key works from
antiquity to the Renaissance. Of particular interest is the largest cast in the world: the façade of the 12th-
century Abbey Church of St. Gilles, in Gard, France.

The 1974 addition of the Sarah Scaife Gallery, designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes, tripled the exhibition space
in the Museum of Art. Also in 1974, a number of preexisting galleries were renovated for special
exhibitions and decorative arts. In 1993, the Heinz Architectural Center, designed by Cicognani Kalla
Architects, was added to the Museum. The three-story Heinz Center, built within a former temporary-exhibition
gallery, houses five changing exhibition galleries, a study room, collection storage facilities, and curatorial
offices for the architecture department.  


Location
Carnegie Museum of Art is located at 4400 Forbes Avenue, in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh, the city's
university district.

 
Admission
Adults $15; senior citizens $12; children and students $11; children under three and members free.


Hours
Carnegie Museum of Art hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Thursday evenings
until 8:00 p.m., and Sunday, noon to 5:00 p.m. Carnegie Museum of Art is closed on most Mondays and holidays,
except during July and August, when the museum is open Mondays. Contact the museum for exact hours (see below).
 
Visitor Services
The Museum of Art Café is open for lunch and the Fossil Fuels Café features gourmet coffees, beverages, and light fare daily until 4:00 p.m. The Museum Store carries exhibition catalogues and a variety of related
publications, posters, postcards, and gift items.
 

Public Transit
Carnegie Museum of Art is serviced by Pittsburgh's Port Authority Transit buses and is a 15-minute bus ride from
downtown.
 

Parking
Ample parking is available in the six-level garage directly behind the museum, at the corner of Forbes
Avenue and South Craig Street.
 

Access
Entrances, restrooms, telephones, and other facilities are accessible to persons with disabilities.  
 

Contact
For information on Carnegie Museum of Art, the public may call 412.622.3131 or visit the museum online at
www.cmoa.org.