Andrew Carnegie donated almost all of his wealth and some of it has been used to build the four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh. They should have a bundle to visit all four museums but you have to buy three separate tickets instead. They even encourage timed ticketing, but how am I supposed to know how long I’m going to spend in each one?
The art and the natural history museum are put together in one building. The art portion of the building is forgettable. After being spoilt for choice in Chicago and Detroit, a hodgepodge of American art from impressionism to Andy Warhol no longer interested me. There’s a separate Andy Warhol museum anyway. The architectural gallery was a big disappointment and doesn’t even live up to the dismal Canadian Center for Architecture in Montreal. The frescoes in the corridor were more interesting than the galleries it leads to.
The natural history part of the museum isn’t much better either. The labels in the bird corridor look like they came from a 1990s high school science fair with maps that are hand-shaded with highlighters, the 4:3 televisions loop outdated documentaries, and a couple of displays were prepared by taxidermists who died over a century ago.
If you don’t have to come to Pittsburgh, go somewhere else.
