Exhibits

Fearless for Art

In addition to our interactive permanent exhibits, visitors had the opportunity to experience the traveling exhibits Exploring Trees Inside and Out, and Bob the Builder™-Project Build It with local presenting sponsor Mascaro Construction this past year.

I’ve always liked the way the Children’s Museum is fearless in presenting art to visitors. We rarely say no to an idea. How else do you end up with three large vats of bubbling clay slip that children dip their hands, arms and anything else into?

We are comfortable with offering unencumbered access to pots of paint, fat brushes, vats brimming with bright paper slurry, inky screens and vast amounts of paper on which visitors create their ideas of the world.

In an annual program called Tough Art, we invite four artists each summer to spend three months in the Museum getting to know us - then ask them to create a unique piece of art that will withstand the rigors of our visitors. After three years, pieces have included a stomping drum machine, giant 12-foot movable puppet, a maze made from recycled fabric, an invasive vine hut, and an LED sculpture featuring 800 twinkling lights.

This summer we began an artist series called F.I.N.E. Artists, supported by the Fine Foundation.  The first artists created an art installation where visitors dressed in “imagination glasses” and cloaks, and told their memories in an environment filled with fluffy white cotton, midnight blue walls and crackling, electric orbs. The installation was called “The Library of Imagined Memories.” Other artists created speed portraits, played with a projected light spectrum and created a giant mural in the Indian rangoli style. There are more innovative artists to come.   

We also commission permanent art which includes pieces where letters rain from the sky, rocks make music, mud bubbles and our building shimmers in the wind.

If I know one thing about the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh it is that we will continue to be unafraid to present art to our visitors that challenges and surprises them.

Blogger: Penny Lodge, Director of Exhibits