Carnegie Museum of Art - CMA

Profil

Carnegie Museum of Art offers a distinguished collection of contemporary art that includes film and video works. Other collections of note include works of American art from the late nineteenth century, French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, and European and American decorative arts from the late seventeenth century to the present. 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. 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 marble Hall of Sculpture replicates the interior of the Parthenon.

While most art museums founded at the turn of the century focused on collections of old masters, Andrew Carnegie envisioned a museum 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-nineteenth century to the present, in French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, and in significant late-twentieth-century works.

In 1994 the museum completed a reinstallation of its pre-1945 American and European fine and decorative arts that combines them in a single chronological sequence. In 2003 the Scaife Galleries, home for many of the paintings, sculptures, works on paper, and decorative arts in the museum's collection, reopened after a yearlong renovation. Improvements include the replacement of skylights, addition of new climate control systems, and an infrastructure to support wireless technology. There is now a larger Works on Paper Gallery located at the entrance to the galleries, and the contemporary art galleries incorporate decorative arts and works on paper along with paintings, sculpture, and film and video pieces. Some of the galleries now feature floor-to-ceiling, salon-style installations of the artwork. Resource areas and comfortable seating have also been integrated into the space, along with educational enhancements.