Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History invite all visitors to enjoy free admission to the museums from 3 to 8 p.m. every Thursday in March. Parking is $6 per car after 3 p.m. Free Thursday Nights in March are made possible by the Buncher Family Foundation. A cash bar will be available.
On View at Carnegie Museum of Natural History
Pterosaurs: Flight in the Age of Dinosaurs. R. P. Simmons Family Gallery, January 30-May 22, 2016.
Organized by the American Museum of Natural History in New York, this blockbuster exhibition explores when pterosaurs ruled the skies. Visitors will learn how they moved on land in the air, how they hunted, and what scientists have discovered recently about their amazing head crests. There are several interactive exhibits in which visitors can fly like a pterosaur, experiment with aerodynamics, and study pterosaur bones under an inspection scope. There is an additional charge for this temporary exhibition. Price is $5 adults and $3 children.
Small Wonders: The World of Cryptocrystalline Quartz. Wertz Gallery: The microscopic crystals in this type of quartz form a beautiful yet durable structure that has lent itself to many uses in human culture.
Art of the Diorama. Explore a series of restored dioramas that feature the early 20th century museum methods used to create lifelike scenes from the natural world
Discovery Basecamp provides hands-on activities, interactive learning, and the opportunity to study real specimens with many tools for observation. There is also a baby-friendly privacy area for breastfeeding mothers.
On View at Carnegie Museum of Art
Silver to Steel: The Modern Designs of Peter Muller-Munk
Silver to Steel is the untold story of one of the preeminent designers of the mid-20th century. A German émigré to the US who moved to Pittsburgh in 1935, Peter Muller-Munk (1904–1967) was a brilliant silversmith, a pioneering industrial designer and educator, and a visionary spokesperson for his profession. Silver to Steel is the first retrospective of his four-decade career, and it situates Muller-Munk among the most influential designers of his generation.
The Propeller Group: The Living Need Light, The Dead Need Music
Created by artist collective The Propeller Group, the video installation follows brass band musicians, spiritual mediums, professional criers, and street performers through the mournful and euphoric public ceremonies of a multi-day wake: a set of colorful rituals that resonate with funeral traditions in New Orleans and other parts of the “global south.”
Teenie Harris Photographs: Great Performances Offstage
Teenie Harris Photographs: Great Performances Offstage , celebrates performances of all kinds as produced or experienced by Pittsburgh’s African American community between ca. 1935 and ca. 1980. Whether it was a star showcase production from Harlem’s Apollo Theater, or a Sunday school nativity pageant, Teenie Harris was there to photograph the anticipation, excitement, and showmanship of a great performance.
HACLab Pittsburgh: Imagining the Modern
The city of Pittsburgh encountered modern architecture through an ambitious program of urban revitalization in the 1950s and ’60s. Through hundreds of photographs, and through archival film, media clippings, and ephemera, HACLab Pittsburgh: Imagining the Modern untangles Pittsburgh’s complicated relationship with modern architecture and urban planning.
Jane Haskell’s Modernism: A Pittsburgh Legacy
Artist, collector, advocate patron; Jane Haskell (1923–2013) was an influential presence in Pittsburgh for more than 40 years. Her own artwork, as well as the objects she collected and commissioned for her home, reveal her particular take on Modernism. Haskell helped Carnegie Museum of Art (CMOA) collect more than 50 works that reflect crucial international developments in abstract art over the course of the 20th century, Jane Haskell’s Modernism presents these important works, highlighting her impact at CMOA and illuminates her legacy in Pittsburgh’s art community.