The biggest change at the Museum of Art in 1996 was new leadership. In August, Richard Armstrong was appointed Henry J. Heinz II Director of the museum, having served as chief curator of the museum and as curator of contemporary art since 1992. Sarah Nichols, curator of decorative arts since 1992, was appointed chief curator in October. Nichols was assistant curator of decorative arts at the museum from 1982 to 1986. And finally, in November Armstrong announced the appointment of Madeleine Grynsztejn as the new curator of contemporary art. Grynsztejn had been associate curator of twentieth-century painting and sculpture at The Art Institute of Chicago. This highly qualified team will continue to put together exhibitions that appeal to a wide range of visitors, and make the museum an exciting place to be.
A program funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts to bring a more diverse audience to the museum, and eliminate barriers that discourage visitors or make them uncomfortable, was set in motion in 1996. The museum set out to learn about the needs and interests of under-served segments of the population such as families with young children and African-Americans. In one program that was put into place as a result of this study, museum staff members go to branches of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh at story hour to introduce children to works in the museum's collections. Art projects, small reproductions of art works, and periodic trips to the museum for the children, their parents, and the librarians are provided free of charge.
Another pilot program at Boyce Middle School draws on the educational value of original objects by pairing museum collections with the school curriculum. Interpretative or creative writing, as well as visits to the library and the Museum of Natural History, all encourage the students to develop relationships with the objects in the collection, make them more comfortable when they visit, and give them positive feelings about the museum and about art in general.
Reaching out to other museums can have beneficial results as well. Made in America: Ten Centuries of American Art was put together by a consortium of five Midwestern museums, and came to the Museum of Art in the summer. Almost 200 masterworks from the five museums were exhibited at each institution, illustrating the highlights of a thousand years of America's visual history. More than a standard survey, this exhibition included works by both celebrated and lesser-known artists that illustrated the dramatic changes in this country during the past ten centuries and revealed how various cultures have woven their creative threads into the national fabric. This joint venture was undertaken by the five museums that collaborated so successfully in the 1989-1990 exhibition Impressionism: Selections from Five American Museums, another example of how institutions can work together to create something much greater than any one of them could accomplish alone.
The only large-scale juried exhibition of area artists, the 86th annual show of the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh, opened in November. This exhibition has recently included submissions from non-members of the AAP as well as members, a step which was encouraged by the Museum of Art and illustrates another example of the museum's trend to be more inclusive.
The works of one of the most popular artists from the 1991 Carnegie International, Ann Hamilton, were exhibited in the Forum gallery in the fall, in a collaboration with Wood Street Galleries. Hamilton has also been commissioned with Michael Van Valkenburgh to design a riverfront park on the Allegheny River downtown, and the Forum exhibition included sketches for this project as well. These new directions for the museum are those of an active community participant, an institution that is building relationships with the people of the region.
Important museum milestones in 1996 include the purchase of eight works from the 1995 Carnegie International, sponsored by PNC Bank Corp., which concluded in 1996. The art acquisition fund increased through the Second Century Fund enabled the museum to buy Table Prepared in the Presence of Enemies by Richard Artschwager, winner of the Carnegie Prize, as well as work by younger artists such as Doris Salcedo, Rachel Whiteread, Thomas Locher and Tony Oursler. Another important purchase last year was Eastman Johnson's Union Soldiers Accepting a Drink, ca. 1896, which is a rare image of slave life in the South in the 1850s and 60s by a classically trained artist.