After shaking off the soot of its blue collar, steel mill past, Pittsburgh has emerged as a brilliant gem in the Rust Belt. In addition to its industrial heritage, avid sports fanaticism and endless number of bridges spanning the famous Three Rivers, the city is now acquiring notice for its growing visual arts culture. Located throughout its many diverse neighborhoods are established museums and a growing number of gallery spaces. Between the stunning collections found in the Carnegie Museum of Art in Oakland to the offbeat works of a Pittsburgh-born pop artist at the Andy Warhol Museum on the North Side, the city offers art enthusiasts an array of media that includes painting, sculpture, contemporary installations, glasswork and more. If it’s discovering a local artist at one of the many galleries that line the streets of downtown and Penn Avenue, or rediscovering an old master at the Frick Art and Historical Center, the city is rich with artistic possibilities. (Amanda Waltz)
Pittsburgh: Art Museums
Pittsburgh Art Museums: Art Museums Around Pittsburgh
Below are our Pittsburgh Art Museum recommendations, with information on location, admission, transportation/parking, museum history and other points of interest in Pittsburgh Art.
Andy Warhol Museum (The Warhol)
Warhol was a Pittsburgh native who participated in almost every art form and was highly eccentric. His avant-garde social life was legion, but as a practicing Catholic, he lived with his mother until her death. The eclectic Warhol Museum surveys all his work: paintings, silk-screens, cartoons, photographs made in photo booths, and films, including all the celebrities encompassed therein. Every Friday night is Good Friday with half-price admission, dances, lectures, …more…
Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State (University Park, PA)
With eleven galleries, a print-study room, a 150-seat auditorium, and an outdoor sculpture garden, the Palmer Museum on the Penn State University Park campus is a major cultural resource for the central Pennsylvania region. Founded in 1972 in a modest three-story building, the permanent collection has blossomed in the past thirty years to include over 6,000 works. With Old Master paintings and sculpture, international art, twentieth-century European works, and American …more…
The Carnegie Museum of Art (The CMOA)
The Heinz Architectural Center underscores the CMOA’s bent toward the collection, study, and exhibition of architectural drawings and sculpture. The Center itself provides a reason for those with architectural interests to visit; the edifice combines Classicism and Modernism, alluding to the Carnegie Institute without mirroring it. It also houses its own galleries and a study room.
The Hall of Architecture holds the largest collection of plaster casts of architectural masterpieces in …more…
The Frick Art and Historical Center
Established by the same Frick family that donated the eponymous New York museum, the Frick opened to the public in 1990. It receives 100,000 visitors annually and has exhibited works by Michelangelo, Carracci, Vasari, Millet, Monet, and Sisley. As in New York, the Pittsburgh center is housed in one of the Frick family’s former residences, called Clayton. The 11-room, Italianate-style home in the city’s East End neighborhood was designed by …more…
The Mattress Factory Art Museum
This contemporary art museum exhibits large-scale installation art that are created on-site by artists. The museum was established in 1977, and has expanded its reach since then by purchasing and renovating nine other buildings in Pittsburgh that have become artist residences, exhibition galleries, and an art garden. About 38,000 visitors come to the museum each year.
While the museum has rotating special exhibitions, it has 16 permanent exhibitions that are always …more…
Westmoreland Museum of American Art
Established in 1949, this museum 35 miles outside Pittsburgh has a strong collection of works that focus on American art of the mid-18th through the mid-20th centuries. It initially focused on collecting work by southwestern Pennsylvania artists, but has acquired works by American artists from all over the country since its founding. ...more...
