60+ Artists in 2011 Pittsburgh Biennial

In 1994 the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts decided it need to show off the strength of the local arts community and it launched the Pittsburgh Biennial. Two years ago it expanded to include works at Pittsburgh Filmmakers and this year it has jumped to three new venues. “I think the artistic community has been very strong for many years,” says Pittsburgh Center for the Arts Director Laura Domencic, “I think there has become more and more recognition of how supportive and important this community and the artists are in the region and nationally as well.”

The names of all of the artists chosen for the biennial have recently been released.

The Andy Warhol Museum, The Carnegie Museum of Art and the Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University will also host works as part of the biennial this year. “Each Curator really developed their own kind of distinct show within their space but also in a very strong sense of what is going on in the other venues,” says Domencic.

The works at the Carnegie will explore the idea of work and labor while the works at the Center for the Arts will mostly be installation works focused on using the space in which they are created. All of the artists at the Warhol are women and collaborative projects take the lead at the Miller Gallery. Each curator chose one artists for the show at Pittsburgh Filmmakers.

Domencic says the types of work vary as well, “From painters to performance art to filmmakers… it’s a wide variety of artists. The common thread is that all the artists have ties to Pittsburgh.

The exhibitions open in two flights. The shows at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts and at Pittsburgh Filmmakers run from June 10th through October 23rd, while the show at the Carnegie Museum of art opens June 17th and runs through September 18th. The second flight comes in September when the shows open at the Miller Gallery and the Andy Warhol Museum.

Thek Retrospective Mounted

The artist Paul Thek burst onto the art scene in the 1960’s and enjoyed fame in the US and Europe for years but was largely forgotten by the time of his death in 1988. His life and his work are being revived by the Carnegie Museum of Art with the Exhibition ‘Paul Thek: Diver’ which opens Saturday. The show gets its name from a painting done on newspaper of a man diving into a body of water. (See left) Co-curator and Carnegie Museum of Art Director Lynn Zelevansky says Thek was drawn to the water and often used water in his works. Zelevansky says the diver work stood out to her and co-curator Elisabeth Sussman of the Whitney museum in New York. “Throughout the show you will see different figures who are surrogates for Thek himself,” says Zelevansky, “The diver seems to Elisabeth and me to be a great symbol for who Thek was and what he was interested in and what he cared about.” She says the idea of going deeper in a fearless way was something to which he aspired.

The first thing a visitors sees is a room filled with Thek’s “meat” works. (right) Thek (pronounced Tek) created sculptures of realistic looking hunks of meat and severed human body parts but then gave many of them a surreal twist including metallic coverings, sprouts of grotesque hair and over sized flies. Most are mounted in plastic cases but one is mounted in a Brillo box given to him by Andy Warhol. “The story goes that he said to Warhol, ‘your Brillo boxes are really nice but they could use some meat’,” says Zelevansky. Thek was known to use his work to take shots at minimalism and pop art.

Part way through his career Thek fell in love with installation work. Only a few components of the installations remain but Zelevansky was able to find pictures of the installations and some video of Thek and his collaborators working on the pieces. The Exhibition also includes pages from Thek’s voluminous journals. (lower left)

By the mid 1980’s Thek had driven away most of his friends and in 1987 he was diagnosed with AIDS but he continued to work. The retrospective recreates Thek’s last show.

Zelevansky has been working on the show for more than five years. She says it is the realization of Thek’s dream to have a retrospective mounted in the US. The retrospective of Thek’s work will be on display through May before moving on to Los Angles. Throughout the run of the show, the museum will offer a long list of programs. Most of them are free. Cell phone tours of the show are also available.

Listen to a longer version of the story here.

Carnegie Shows Off Evolution

The Carnegie Museum of Natural History launches a 6-month look at the science behind evolution this weekend when it opens ‘Explore Evolution.’ It is a touring show that looks at several studies ranging from the evolution of whales millions of years ago to the co-evolution of a species of ants, fungus, bacteria, and mold. CMNH program specialist Laurie Giarratani says another part of the exhibition looks at the rapid changes seen in the HIV virus. “Usually we think of evolution as something that takes place over a long time… millions of years,” says Giarratani, “but with simpler organisms that have a smaller genome, a single mutation is going to have a larger effect.” While a virus is not a living organism it does have DNA and this study looks at the changes the HIV virus has gone through as it adapts to defend itself against a number of medical drugs. The research could be key in finding a vaccine for the virus that causes AIDS.

The Carnegie adds in an eighth study to the seven that travel as part of the exhibit. The museum’s curator of vertebrate paleontology, Chris Beard adds his own research title, “The micromonkey and anthropoid origins.” It looks at the genus Eosimias, that Beard helped to identify, and his subsequent research on other early anthropoids in China, Myanmar, and Libya. Beard will give a lecture Saturday at noon as part of the opening day events.

Giarratani says, “Our Goal here is to help people understand the science behind evolution… and not commenting on religion at all.” We hope people can come to the museum and can connect the science here to their lives.” Giarratani says it is up to the visitors to engage those ideas in whatever way makes sense to them.

The exhibit runs through July 24th.

Carnegie Museums Gets New Director

A special meeting of the Carnegie Museums board yesterday made official what has been expected all week; John Wetenhall has been selected as the new president of the 116-year-old system. Wetenhall will oversee the Carnegie Museum of Art, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Carnegie Science Center, and The Andy Warhol Museum. He is the ninth person to hold the post. Wetenhall will succeed David Hillenbrand who spent five years in the position.

Wetenhall is currently the executive director of The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida. He also serves on the boards of the American Association of Museums and the U.S. National Committee of the International Council of Museums and has been museum director for the Cheekwood Gardens in Nashville, Tennessee and Miami Museum of Art in Florida.

Wetenhall says he will work to break down any silos that separate the four museums under his charge. “I look forward to encouraging collaboration across these four great museums—and even more, to opening our institution to partnerships with cultural, scientific, and educational institutions throughout Pittsburgh and beyond,” says Wetenhall

Board members say Wetenhall jumped to the front of the pack of potential candidates. “John immediately stood out to our committee, first on paper and then even more so in person,” says Lee Foster, chair of the Carnegie Museums board of trustees, who led the search. “He has devoted his career to museums and museum management—first as an art historian and curator, then as a museum director—and it’s obvious that he is passionate about his work. He also appreciates the complexities and the tremendous opportunities unique to an organization with multiple parts, and he led such an organization through significant growth and expansion.

Wetenhall says he is looking forward to funding new ways to get the collection outside of the museums’ walls by using the Internet and other new technologies.

"There are a lot of up front costs in those projects, but once materials are online they become very affordable," Wetenhall says.

Wetenhall will join Carnegie Museums on March 7.

More Museum Visitors Benefiting From ACCESS

The Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History are reporting a dramatic increase in the use of the ACCESS EBT (electronic benefits transfer) card admission program. That program allows individuals on government assistance, including foster children and their caregivers, low-income residents, the elderly and disabled people, to come to the museum for drastically reduced price....$1.
Lynn Zelevansky, the director of the Carnegie Museum of Art , says in 2007, before the program was widely marketed 171 visitors took part in the program and this year they expect 11,000 people will benefit from the ACCESS discount....　

"All visitors have to do is show up, present their ACCESS EBT card and pay just $1 to visit. The program is special in that it eliminates price as a barrier year-round and allows people to visit at their convenience, not just on one or two free days a year when the museum is packed and the experience is not always ideal."

The $1 ACCESS admission is accepted at the Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History, the Carnegie Science Center and the Andy Warhol Museum. The museums accept ACCESS cards from all states.

Peaceful Protest to Protect Powdermill To Be Held at the Carnegie

The Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History will be the site of protest this evening. A group of opponents to Marcellus Shale gas drilling will protest outside the museums' holiday event. The Carnegie is considering a proposal to allow gas pipelines from nearby gas wells to run through its Powdermill Nature Reserve.

According to Mel Packer, an organizer of today’s protest, Powdermill Nature Preserve, kept in near untouched condition for 60 years by the Carnegie Museum, would be at risk of pollution...

“Powdermill is a pristine nature preserve which, in the words of the Carnegie scientists, has one of the only unpolluted streams that they can do aquatic research in. To allow drilling around that site will inevitably poison that stream and absolutely spoil Powdermill.”

Pittsburgh City Council Tuesday unanimously approved a resolution urging the Carnegie not to cooperate with any natural gas extraction in or around the Powdermill Nature Reserve.

Museum spokeswoman Betsy Momich earlier said that the board of trustees is studying proposals.....and environmental impact "is at the top of the list of concerns" but revenue from drilling is a factor. The museum uses the nature reserve in Cook Township as a research field station where scientists study changes in the environment and wildlife populations.

Tom Sokolowski: It's Time to Leave

The man who has led the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh for nearly 15 years will leave that post at the end of December. Tom Sokolowski says it's time to leave.

The Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh announced the departure in a press release Monday....."Tom saw beyond what could have been the limitations of a single-artist museum," said Carnegie Museums President David Hillenbrand.

Sokolowski told DUQ'S Kevin Gavin that generating an international awareness of the museum and the artist with shows all over Europe, South America, Australia, New Zealand, Asia...."we've been everywhere but Antarctica.

Sokolowski says his plans after he leaves the Warhol Museum are uncertain at this point.

Listen to the interview with Tom Sokolowski.

Longtime Director to Part with Warhol Museum

Tom Sokolowski will leave his position as director of the Andy Warhol Museum soon after 14 years at the post.

The Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh announced Sokolowski’s December 31 departure in a news release, but didn’t give a reason for his exit.

In the release, departing Carnegie Museums President David Hillenbrand says Sokolowski “saw beyond what could have been the limitations of a single-artist museum.”

Pittsburgh Center for the Arts Executive Director Charlie Humphrey says Sokolowski brought both regional and international recognition to the Warhol Museum. Humphrey says he imagines the next director will have many of the same qualities as Sokolowski.

“Someone who has the chops of having operated a gallery (Tom came from the great gallery at NYU), who has the scholarship, the deep understanding of Warhol himself,” says Humphrey. “Tom’s charisma’s pretty hard to replace. I don’t know how you shop for that.”

Neither the Carnegie Museums nor Sokolowski returned calls for comment.

Carnegie Museum of Art opens “Ordinary Madness”

For some it may seem like a trip down memory lane, for others it will be a gallery full of new discoveries but CMOA Associate Curator of Contemporary Art, Dan Byers says for him it is look at the everyday and finding it laced with the surreal, the uncanny and the extraordinary. The show “Ordinary Madness” highlights those juxtapositions by using pieces in the museum’s archives. “Some of them have not been on display for years,” says Byers. However, he says visitors may recognize some of the works from past internationals and from the rotating contemporary art collection housed in the Scaif Galleries. Byers says the show grew out of an interest in finding ways to sustain the city’s energy and engagement with contemporary art outside of the internationals. To put together the show Byers says he was able to “dig deep into the holdings.” Some of that was done by looking at pictures saved on computers but at other times he had to go down into the bowels of the museum to look at the works first hand. Byers says he found enough material to do the show “two or three times over” and he may launch a similar show some time in the future. Like many museums, CMOA is looking for new ways to use its archives and Byers says this is a great way to depart from the chronological perspective taken in the Scaif gallery. This show looks at works from 1945 to the present and includes paintings, sculpture, photography and video.

The show, which runs through January 9, will include two evenings of film screenings. The first runs from 6pm to 7:30pm October 22 and brings together works that focus on the irrational, ambivalent, and chaotic aspects of everyday experience and pop-culture phenomena. The second runs November 10, 6–7:30 p.m. and will highlight the junction between art and life and investigate the divide between reality and its distortion in myth, desire, and individual perception.

To help visitors through the exhibition, the museum has produced a fully illustrated, free “pocket guide,” containing color reproductions of many of the artworks on view and essays by Byers and other museum employees.

Listen to an interview with Dan Byers here.

Carnegie Museum Property Eyed for Drilling

Natural gas companies are interested in drilling on land that belongs to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Westmoreland County. Carnegie Spokeswoman Betsy Momich says they've received inquiries from several companies about drilling at the 2,200-acre Powdermill Nature Reserve. She says the museum's trustees are studying the proposals but are a long way from making a final decision. Momich says environmental impact is at the top list of concerns and the revenue from drilling is also a factor. The museum uses the nature reserve in Cook Township as a research field station where scientists study changes in the environment and wildlife populations.

Thursday, Biggest Meteor Shower of the Year

The Carnegie Science Center is letting people know that the Perseid meteor shower is about to take place this Thursday, August 12, and will be highly visible if the weather permits.
Education Coordinator for the Buhl Planetarium Dan Malerbo says a shooting star, or a meteor, is a speck of dust that enters the earth’s atmosphere allowing people to see a streak of light in the sky. He says on the average night, we can see 3 or 4 shooting stars an hour. However, certain times of the year the earth travels through a trail of dust and debris left by a passing comet, causing a meteor shower.
Malerbo says the Perseid meteor shower is the biggest of the year because this particular path that the earth will travel through is one of the widest.
He says to see the shower at its best, go away from the city and bright lights, where the sky is dark, lay down and look northeast, towards the constellation of Perseid. As long as the “hazy” sky conditions clear up by dark, you should be able to see 50 to 60 shooting stars per hour between midnight and dawn.

Reopening of Decorative Arts Gallery at Carnegie Museum

The Aisla Mellon Bruce Galleries for Decorative Arts at the Carnegie Museum of Art will reopen on November 21st after being closed for almost ten years. The galleries contain about 500 examples of U.S., European and Asian decorative arts from the mid-18th century to the present.

The gallery takes up about 8,500 square feet of exhibition space. There are four galleries, one is devoted to a rotating exhibit while the others are permanent.

Many of the objects are newly acquired or have never been exhibited to the public.

Dinosaur Mural Wins Prize

PaleoArtists have won the coveted Lanzendorf Prize for the Hell Creek Mural which is displayed in the Dinosaurs in Their Time exhibit at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. The mural which is 92 feet in length features Pachycephalosaurus, a herd of Edmontosaurus dinosaurs and Triceratops and serves as a backdrop for the scene of one T-Rex battling another over a fallen Edmontosaurus. Bob Walters and Tess Kissinger, the creators of the mural, have been awarded the Lanzendorf PaleoArt Prize for 2D Art for the mural's scientific accuracy and its portrayal of late Cretaceous Age (about 68 million years ago) South Dakota.

Carnegie Museum of Art Names New Director

Lynn Zelevansky is taking the role of Director for the Carnegie Museum of Art, replacing Richard Armstrong, who left the museum to direct the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in New York. Zelevansky, a specialist in contemporary art, says she would like to bring a global perspective to the direction of the museum, having worked in Brazil, Japan, and many other foreign countries. "Obviously I want to be sensitive to the environment in Pittsburgh... but I also think that the international aspect of the museum is in its DNA. It just makes it easier for me to help the curators if they are interested in pursuing art from the places where I've done so much work," says Zelevansky. The new director says she had never wanted to be a museum director, but this particular institution proved irresistable. "It has everything to do with the nature of the nature of the museum, the size of it, the nature of its ambition, its wonderful collection... I think it has potential to be an important force regionally, nationally, and internationally," says Zelevansky. She adds that she already has some ideas for the next International exhibit. "This is the International of the Facebook generation," she says. "How do we reflect that?" Zelevansky will be leaving her current position as curator of modern and contemporary art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to take the position on July 15.

"Migration" Comes Home to Pittsburgh

The Carnegie museum of art purchased works from about half of the artists in the 2008 Carnegie International art exhibition. International Curator Douglas Fogle says after the show opened he decided he had to pursue Doug Aitken’s work “Migration.” The film explores repetition in the urban landscape and the way we move through our built environment. The artist recut the film and added a soundtrack. The new version is now on display in the re-hung contemporary galleries. Aitken says the film was made with Pittsburgh in mind so it provides him a sense of completion to end the migration here. Listen to a longer audio version of this story

Early Horse Domestication 5500 Years Ago in Kazakhstan

The earliest evidence of horse domestication is in Kazakhstan, where villages of the Botai culture show that 5500 years ago, previously nomadic peoples were living in permanent settlements of up to a thousand residents with economies based completely on the horse.

Dr. Sandra Olsen, Curator of Anthropology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, says evidence from excavations shows the Botai milked their horses, ate them, rode them and sacrificed them to a sun god, besides using their manure for insulation and roofing.

Olsen's research is highlighted in today's issue of the journal Science and in "The Horse", an exhibit at the Carnegie until May 24th. She says the exhibit shows the horse is the most important domesticated animal because of the varied roles it has played in human history. A video in the exhibit shows the use of horses in yet a new role: equine therapy for physically handicapped riders.

Fogle Leaves the Carnegie for L.A.

Douglas Fogle, curator of contemporary art and organizer of the Carnegie International 2008, will leave the Carnegie Museum of Art to become deputy director and chief curator of the Hammer Museum of Los Angeles in May.

"Life on Mars" , the 55th Carnegie International, was seen by more people than any other since the first in 1896.

Visitors flock to The Carnegie Museums in 2008

Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh set a new record for annual admissions at its four museums last year. More than 1.1 million people visited the facilities, breaking the previous 2001 record of just more than a million visitors. Betsy Momich, spokeswoman for the museums, says the increase could be attributed to the seven-month run of the Carnegie International art exhibit, as well as the final phase of the opening of "Dinosaurs in Their Time," a long-awaited natural history museum upgrade. The BODIES exhibition at the Carnegie Science Center also attracted national attention and 266,000 visitors. Momich says the admissions record speaks for the cultural value of the city, not just for residents, but for over 200,000 out-of-town guests. Momich says the re-opening of the Bruce Galleries and SportsWorks should help make 2009 another very successful year for the museums.

Carnegie Museums Take Over Three Rivers Arts Festival

Citing financial distress, Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh is taking control of the Three Rivers Arts Festival ahead of the event's 50th anniversary next year. Betsy Momich, Director of Communications for the museums says they've already eliminated the festival's top two administrative positions and will be conducting a review of its finances. Momich is not sure what this means for the festival's independence from the museums in the future. Over the past two years the event has struggled to find a venue as its traditional home at Point State Park has been under construction.

Carnegie Museum of Art Seeks Teens

The Carnegie Museum of Art has received a grant of $150,000 from the Fine Foundation to enlist a group of teens to interact with the art, artists and visitors at the 2008 Carnegie International, which opens May 4th and runs until January, 2009. With help from area high schools and community groups, recruitment is already underway, and interested individuals can get information about applying by calling the museum.

The team will manage a special section for teens called 'Ground Zero' on the exhibit's participatory website, staff visitor lounges at the exhibit, plan special events, and learn about the artists and their work, as well as all behind the scene activities.