Photo: Joshua FranzosCarnegie Museums celebrates two significant anniversaries this year. In May, The Andy Warhol Museum opened its much-anticipated KAWS + Warhol exhibition in honor of the museum’s 30th anniversary, which you’ll read about in this issue. And this July, Carnegie Museum of Natural History is set to commemorate the 125th anniversary of the discovery of Diplodocus carnegii, affectionately known as “Dippy,” the world-famous dinosaur unearthed in 1899 by a team that Andrew Carnegie had sent to Wyoming with instructions to bring back something colossal to Pittsburgh. They did just that, and the fascinating story of what came next is also chronicled in this issue.
While these anniversaries couldn’t be more different, together they highlight the legacy of Carnegie Museums and the role they continue to play in fueling the vitality of the Pittsburgh region.
Andrew Carnegie believed his investments in art and culture would enhance the quality of life of the people of Pittsburgh. But he cannot have known how much his museums and other arts and cultural institutions would mean to the economies of the communities they serve.
Every day … nonprofit arts and culture organizations are making their communities better places to live and work.
Arts & Economic Prosperity 6, an economic and social impact study recently published by Americans for the Arts (in collaboration with the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council), provides a compelling account of the contributions of arts and culture in 373 regions across the country. Every day, the report shows, nonprofit arts and culture organizations are making their communities better places to live and work.
Nationally, the arts and culture sector generated $151.7 billion in economic activity from June 2022 through June 2023: $73.3 billion in spending by arts and cultural groups and an additional $78.4 billion in event-related expenditures by their audiences.
Regionally, the numbers are even more compelling, as they point to an arts and culture community that is outperforming expectations for a region our size. Over the same year, spending by Allegheny County’s arts and cultural institutions and their audiences totaled $1.3 billion, which includes $544 million in spending by the arts groups themselves and another $711 million in event-related audience spending—everything from food and lodging to transportation and parking. That’s almost twice the economic impact of the arts and culture community in Cuyahoga County (aka Cleveland). As for the economic impact of the four Carnegie Museums: it amounts to more than $132 million, which includes nearly $86 million in spending by our organization and $47 million by our audiences.
The report also shows that annual cultural tourism is up in Allegheny County from the year of the last report (2017–18), which is opposite the national trend, as is spending per-person, per-event on cultural activities.
Equally encouraging is the fact that, of the approximately 800 people who were surveyed regionally as part of this report, 90 percent said that the cultural activities they were participating in inspired a sense of pride in their neighborhood or community, and 89 percent regarded their attendance as a way of ensuring that these cultural assets would be preserved for generations to come. That’s a goal that, I’m grateful to say, they share with our ever-growing community of members.
Steven Knapp
President and Chief Executive Officer
Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh
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