Today we opted to pay a visit to a couple of Pittsburgh's cultural touchstones, the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History to take in two very fascinating exhibits now being featured at these venues.
At the Museum of Art over 1,000 photographs of famous Pittsburgh based photographer Charles "Teenie" Harris are displayed in an exhibit that will visit three other American cities over the next two years. The photos are works of art in their own right, but they can be viewed as historical documents as well. Harris worked mainly for the Pittsburgh Courier as well as a free lance photographer from the early 1940's and into the 1980's. The pictures show the vibrant community that the Hill District was and also shows the decline of that community as well for various and sundry reasons over the course of time. You see famous people like Lena Horne, Joe Louis, and Josh Gibson and ordinary, everyday people as well.
The Museum of Natural History has a large display of the pins and brooches that were worn by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright over the course of her long diplomatic career, with emphasis on her tenure as the Secretary of State. She would always wear such pins to set the tone of her meetings with various world leaders from Kim Jong Il to Yassir Arafat to the Queen of England to Saddam Husein. A beautiful, fascinating, and most interesting exhibit.
It had been a number of years since we had visited the Carnegie out in Oakland. It's a great place, and one admission gets you into both museums. Think about taking in one or both of these exhibits while they are still in town.
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