Carnegie Museum of Art

The Carnegie Museum of Art is an art museum located in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded by industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, it opened to the public on November 5, 1895, and is widely considered the first museum of modern art in the United States. Originally established as the Department of Fine Arts of the Carnegie Institute, it is now one of four institutions comprising the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh. The museum's founding mission, to collect the "Old Masters of tomorrow," established a forward-looking approach that has shaped its identity for more than a century. Today it holds approximately 35,000 objects and presents up to 15 exhibitions annually, ranging from ancient and classical art to contemporary practice.

Andrew Carnegie first conceived of the museum in 1886 with the aim of preserving a record of the progress of pictorial art in America. The first gallery opened for public viewing on November 5, 1895, within what became the Main Branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh in Oakland. A major expansion came in 1907 with the addition of the Hall of Architecture, Hall of Sculpture, and Ailsa Mellon Bruce Galleries, funded by Carnegie. In 1963 the institution was officially renamed the Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute. The most significant twentieth-century expansion occurred under director Leon A. Arkus with the construction of the Sarah Mellon Scaife Gallery, designed by architect Edward Larrabee Barnes, which opened in 1974 and more than doubled the museum's exhibition space. New York Times critic John Russell described it as an "unflawed paradise." The gallery has been renovated several times, most recently in 2004. The museum's name was changed again in 1986 to Carnegie Museum of Art, clarifying its status as one of the four Carnegie Museums. Since 1896 the museum has organized the Carnegie International, one of the oldest and most influential recurring exhibitions of contemporary art in North America.

The museum's curatorial departments encompass Fine Arts (including Contemporary Art and Works on Paper), Decorative Arts, Architecture, and Photography. Its permanent collection of approximately 35,000 objects spans from the late seventeenth century to the present and includes paintings, sculptures, prints, works on paper, and installations. Particular strengths include French Impressionism and Post-Impressionism alongside American art from the late nineteenth century to the present. The museum maintains significant holdings in Japanese prints, contemporary glass, and pictorialist photography. It also holds collections of aluminum objects and chairs, and manages a major archive of negatives by African American photographer Charles "Teenie" Harris, documenting life in Pittsburgh from the 1930s through the 1970s. The Heinz Architectural Center, established in 1993, collects and studies architecture, landscape design, engineering, and furniture and interior design, with a library and 4,000 square feet of exhibition space. The Hillman Photography Initiative produces public events, web-based projects, documentary videos, and writing through yearly programming determined by appointed agents. Approximately 1,800 works are on view at any given time.

Among the most celebrated works in the collection is Claude Monet's Water Lilies (Nymphéas), painted between 1915 and 1926, one of six large panels from the artist's iconic series. Vincent van Gogh's Wheat Fields After the Rain (The Plain of Auvers), painted in 1890 during his final months at Auvers-sur-Oise, is another major landscape. The museum also holds Edward Hopper's Sailing (1911), Edwin Landseer's A Dog Looking out of a Kennel (1837), and Walter Gay's The Three Vases of the four. Dutch artist Anton Mauve's Mallejan (The Timber Truck of The Loggers), acquired in March 1911, is a significant winter landscape and one of the most important Dutch works in the collection. Paul Signac's Place des Lices is also represented. The Carnegie International has yielded major acquisitions for the permanent collection, including Winslow Homer's The Wreck (1896) and James A. McNeill Whistler's Arrangement in Black: Portrait of Señor Pablo de Sarasate (1884). The contemporary collection includes Rachel Whiteread's sculpture Untitled (Domestic) (2002), and works by Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Willem de Kooning, Alberto Giacometti, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Piet Mondrian, Ellsworth Kelly, Sol LeWitt, and Louise Bourgeois.

The museum is situated at 4400 Forbes Avenue in Pittsburgh's Oakland neighborhood, near the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. The original 1895 gallery occupied the Carnegie Library building. The 1907 expansion added the Hall of Architecture, Hall of Sculpture, and Bruce Galleries. The Hall of Architecture houses nearly 140 full-size plaster casts of architectural elements from ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, as well as Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance Europe, making it the largest such collection in the Americas and one of the three largest in the world, alongside the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Musée national des Monuments Français in Paris. The Hall of Sculpture was modeled after the Parthenon's inner sanctuary and originally held 69 plaster casts of Egyptian, Near Eastern, Greek, and Roman sculpture. The 1974 Sarah Mellon Scaife Gallery addition, designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes, added 125,000 square feet including a children's studio, theater, café, offices, and bookstore. The Forum Gallery, opened November 3, 1990 with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, is dedicated to temporary exhibitions of contemporary art. The Ailsa Mellon Bruce Galleries, renovated in 2009, now display more than 500 objects of American and European decorative arts from the eighteenth century to contemporary design.

The Carnegie Museum of Art is located at 4400 Forbes Avenue in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It operates as part of the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, which also includes the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, the Carnegie Science Center, and The Andy Warhol Museum. The museum's website is www.cmoa.org. Its archives are accessible through records.cmoa.org, featuring digitized institutional records with ongoing additions. The museum hosts up to 15 different exhibitions annually and presents the Carnegie International every few years, with the most recent iteration having opened in May 2026.