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Buildingthe Future
On
November 8, Carnegie Museums made public its goal to raise
$150 million as part of its Building the Future campaign.
And true to form, Pittsburgh’s most far-reaching cultural
player is reaching far again.
By
Elaine Vitone
Andrew Carnegie was a pragmatic guy who didn’t waste
words—or money for that matter. Yet in 1898, a fantastic
newspaper account detailing the discovery of the fossilized
remains of a mysterious, “colossal” creature captured
his imagination enough for him to take a big risk. With his
typical determination to excel, the Scotsman ripped the article
from the New York paper and wrote on it an understated command
to the director of his new museum: “Buy this for Pittsburgh.”
Simply
put, Carnegie wanted the best for the Oakland institution
that bore his name. So he sent a team of diggers to Wyoming,
hoping they would find a suitable skeleton or two to bring
home to Pittsburgh. They did, and within a decade, Carnegie
Museum of Natural History’s collection of pre-historic
beasts grew to be one of the world’s largest.
More
than a century later, through its $150 million Building
the Future campaign, Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh is remaining
faithful to the spirit of its namesake to obtain the best
for Pittsburgh and all of Western Pennsylvania. Announced
on November
8, the campaign has already raised $118 million towards
its
ultimate goal. And the projects it will fund address the
here and now, and years into the future.
“
This campaign honors where we came from, celebrates who we
are today, and commits to building a strong foundation for
the future,” says David Hillenbrand, president of Carnegie
Museums of Pittsburgh.
Living the Legacy
What Carnegie Museums is today, Hillenbrand notes, is exactly
what Andrew Carnegie would have wanted his museums to become: “amazingly
diverse,” and more than just a little aware of the
responsibility of such a great legacy.
Carnegie Museums has
stepped up to that legacy in a big way over the years,
and will continue to do so, Hillenbrand adds. “Just
look at all we’ve accomplished in the past 15 years alone.
We opened two new museums—Carnegie Science Center and
The Andy Warhol Museum—giving the region two incredibly
important cultural and educational assets. We renovated and
rejuvenated our Scaife Galleries, home to Carnegie Museum of
Art’s outstanding
permanent collections. And we’re now creating a new home
for our world-renowned dinosaurs, which will be a first-day
attraction for Pittsburgh.
“
Just as important, our museums play a vital role in the
daily education of the region’s children and are
responsible for bringing some of the most thought-provoking
science and
art exhibitions to the region.”
It’s no surprise,
then, that the Building the Future campaign’s goals
reflect Carnegie Museums’ diversity.
Projects funded through the campaign include the construction
of Dinosaurs in Their World, scheduled to open in November
2007; the expansion of Powdermill Nature Reserve, the Museum
of Natural History’s 2,200-acre biological field
station in the Laurel Highlands; the renovation of the
Sarah Scaife
Galleries, home to Carnegie Museum of Art’s permanent
collections; the construction of a Center for Museum Education
at Carnegie Museums’ Oakland facility; program endowment
to fund educational and exhibition programming at all four
Carnegie Museums; and unrestricted endowment.
A Community Thing
Whether talking about a new home for Carnegie’s dinosaurs,
the museums’ critically acclaimed exhibitions, or their
groundbreaking educational programs, it takes more than desire
to stay on top. It takes a big community of supporters, which
Carnegie Museums has always enjoyed.
Building the Future’s largest individual gift—$12.8
million—came from the Hillman Foundation, directed to
Carnegie Museums unrestricted endowment, the Dinosaurs
in Their World project, program endowment for The Andy Warhol Museum
and Carnegie Museum of Art, and the renovation of Hillman Hall
of Minerals and Gems at Carnegie Museum of Natural History.
“
This level of giving is a fantastic show of support for
our museums,” says Suzy Broadhurst, chair of the
Carnegie Museums Board of Trustees. “It’s
humbling, really.”
Pittsburgh businessman Dick Simmons,
chairman emeritus of Allegheny Technologies Incorporated
and member of the
Carnegie Museum of Natural History board,
gave
his own gift of $5 million to endow the Museum of Natural
History’s
special exhibits gallery, which will help pay the cost
of bringing world-class, traveling natural history exhibits
to Pittsburgh.
The museum’s third-floor gallery is now called the
R.P. Simmons Family Gallery. “We all have to understand
that such a community treasure is a shared responsibility,” Simmons
says. “We’re part of a continuum of community
responsibility and pride.”
Lee Foster, chairman of
L.B. Foster Company and chair of the Carnegie Museums campaign,
notes that an important part of building Carnegie Museums’ future
is about making its big community of supporters that much
bigger.
“
The foundations in this community have always been extraordinarily
generous,” Foster says. “But for our museums to
prosper and continue to supply the same level of cultural and
scientific resources to this region, we need more individuals
to step up to the plate as well. It truly is an obligation.”
Strength in Numbers
A critical component of any campaign—particularly one
that supports four distinctive museums—is endowment,
Broadhurst explains. “Endowment is about securing our
future and securing our children’s future, too,” she
says. “We must be able to continue to serve our mission—providing
outstanding educational and cultural experiences. Endowment
helps us do that.”
So, in addition to funding the bricks-and-mortar
projects of this campaign, Building the Future will
raise about $40 million
for endowment. These funds fall into the categories Carnegie
Museums calls “advancing our strengths” and “preserving
the tradition.”
The tradition, says Hillenbrand, is
one of “using the
transformational power of art in all its diversity and
science in all its wonder to inspire and educate.” The
strengths are obvious: world-class art and science exhibitions,
renowned
scientific prowess, and a dedication to education that
now makes Carnegie Museums the region’s largest provider
of K-12 educational programming other than the public school
system.
Building the Future allows donors to support endowment
for educational programming at any or all of the four Carnegie
Museums, and it also creates exhibition endowment for each
of the four museums.
“
We expect so much out of our museums,” says Hillenbrand. “We
expect them to be dynamic, ever-changing, and risk takers.
But we have to give them the tools they need to be all
of those things, and those tools are expensive. Educational
programming
takes time and money. And world-class traveling exhibits
cost money. This campaign commits to building endowment
to meet—and
hopefully exceed—the expectations.”
Preserving
historic buildings is costly, too. Early in the campaign,
Carnegie Museum of Art took on the task of
renovating
its Scaife Galleries, home to the museum’s expansive
permanent collections. Not able to wait for funding to
be completed—because,
as Hillenbrand puts it, “sometimes you can’t
wait to preserve such precious treasures!”—the
repair of leaking skylights and the renovation of the galleries
was
completed in spectacular form in 2003. It included the
re-installation of 70 percent more art.
The Scaife Gallery
renovation falls under the heading “preserving
the future” in Carnegie Museums’ campaign,
alongside unrestricted endowment, which is the kind of
endowment that
every cultural organization wants to raise, says Foster. “It
gives an organization the flexibility to respond quickly
to need and opportunity.”
Need can’t always
be planned long-term. And as Carnegie Museums knows quite
well, opportunity can sometimes come out
of left field—or the pages of a newspaper, in an
article about “colossal” prehistoric creatures.
Building the future, today.
You don’t need a crystal ball to catch a peek of the
future at Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh. Take a stroll through
the old Dinosaur Hall, where an old space has already been
transformed into a new hall connected to a giant new space
with a three-story atrium—the home of the future Dinosaurs
in Their World, the breathtaking new permanent home for the
Museum of Natural History’s dinosaurs. Set to open in
late 2007, it could increase attendance at the Oakland facility
by 40 percent during its inaugural year, and greatly increase
tourism to the region.
“
If people want to know, understand, and walk with the dinosaurs,” says
Carnegie Museums Board Chair Suzy Broadhurst, “they’re
going to need to come to Pittsburgh to do it.”
On the atrium’s ground floor, the new Center for Museum
Education will house six classrooms that will give educators
and youngsters more room to explore the natural history of
the Earth, with the help of the Museum of Natural History’s
education staff. The center will also give the museum’s
distance-learning program a good high-tech home. Carnegie
Museums hopes the distance-learning lab may also be used
by Carnegie
Science Center, The Andy Warhol Museum, and Carnegie Museum
of Art.
A bit farther away, the Powdermill Sustainable Facilities
Development Project will expand this Laurel Highlands living
science lab—with
new classrooms, exhibits, a research lab, an expanded library,
and a conference room—all using environmentally friendly “green” geothermal
heating and cooling systems and a biological wastewater
cleaning system. The expansion and renovation celebrates
Powdermill’s
50th anniversary this year.
On the city’s North Shore,
Carnegie Science Center has already unveiled its Buhl Digital
Dome, where visitors can
view crystal clear images of the solar system captured
by unmanned space missions. Funding for the project, which
is also part
of the Building the Future campaign, came from long-time
Science Center supporter The Buhl Foundation.
And for an
example of the kinds of creative, out-of-the-box educational
programs that might come from future endowment
support, look no further than The Andy Warhol Museum
homepage at www.warhol.org).
The
Warhol’s
new Resources & Lessons online curriculum is an example
of what Carnegie Museums’ educators can do when their
creativity is backed by financial support.
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Copyright (c)
2006 CARNEGIE Magazine. All rights reserved.