Seen + Heard: Spring 2020

Let’s Collaborate

Kiki Teshome

In February, Carnegie Museum of Art welcomed its first Margaret Powell Curatorial Fellow, Kiki Teshome. While an undergraduate studying government at Smith College, Teshome began exploring her interest in the arts through museum experiences at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Dallas Contemporary.

Now she’ll immerse herself in full-time, collaborative curatorial work through a two-year fellowship named in honor of a former Carnegie Museum of Art curator and intended for recent college grads from historically underrepresented backgrounds. The fellowship is funded through the Arts, Equity, & Education Fund of Pittsburgh.

All aboard, digitally speaking

The Mark V diving rig, invented in 1916 and used until 1986, allowed divers to work at previously unreachable depths.

Not able (or willing) to explore the Science Center’s USS Requin submarine? Now you can do it digitally in the USS Requin Gateway, a small exhibition near the Science Center’s RiverView Café that features a video trek through the sub’s passageways and a few attention-grabbing artifacts and memorabilia including a U.S. Navy dive suit, an anti-ship torpedo, and a quartermaster’s spyglass.

Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait (detail), 1978, The Andy Warhol Museum © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

“Today when I work on Warhol projects I feel as if I am sharing a visual story about a personal friend who helped shape the 20th century.” – José Carlos Diaz, The Warhol’s chief curator, in an interview by The Hindu during the India Art Fair 2020, where he was a featured speaker.

85,000-object art collection: Priceless

Volunteers carefully transported recovered artifacts down several New York City blocks. Photo: Edward Cheng of MOCA

After a fire broke out in the archives building of Manhattan’s Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) on January 23, fear quickly spread that most of the storied collection could be lost. But thanks to the Herculean efforts of firefighters, volunteers, and staff, museum officials believe a good portion of the 85,000 artworks and rare artifacts will be salvageable. The museum’s archives make up the rich story of the Chinese migration to the United States: textiles, menus from Chinatown’s earliest restaurants, wedding dresses, handwritten letters, tickets for ship’s passage, and much more, underscoring the importance of museum collections to people’s lives. Before the fire, the museum had digitized and backed up about 35,000 objects.