Before you even get into the Children's Museum, you'll find some cool fish "flying" above our parking lot!

Look up in the the Museum's Rotunda in the Studio to see more light, 890 strands of pink and orange surveyor's flagging tape suspended in mid-air in a 28'x28 configuration. Air movements created by visitors to the Studio and changing light from above and below add fluttering depth and organic movement to this deceptively minimal piece.

This art piece turns the surface of the new building into a giant wind sculpture. Tens of thousands of hinged flaps attached to a screen reflect wind currents and make the building appear to move and shimmer.

Funded by the Katherine Mabis McKenna Foundation

Meet our 13-foot tall Great Blue Heron as soon as you walk in the door!

Funded by The Creative Heights Program of the Heinz Endowments and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

In this magical piece, you use your own body to catch and to play with virtual falling letters. When you enter the installation space, you see a live video image of yourself combined with animated letters raining down on you from above. Like rain or snow, the letters land on your head and arms and can be caught, lifted and then let fall again. By catching enough letters, you and your friends can decipher words and phrases in the rain. Text Rain is an interactive video installation customized for the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh.

Learn more about Camille Utterback and Romy Achituv.

Funded by Child Health Association of Sewickley

"Dinosaur on an Ice Cream Cone" sits atop an entryway in the Grand Hall - a huge inflatable sculpture constructed entirely of recycled billboard vinyl by local artist Tim Kaulen. In this tasty case, the billboard featured ice cream cones in a collage-like pop art surface. Good thing our Cafe is nearby.

Funded by The Heinz Endowments' Creative Heights Program.

Arc Tangent is an interactive installation created by Camille Utterback and customized for the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh. This piece activates the physical space between visitors by creating visual consequences to their bodies' locations. As you approach a circular floor projection, dynamic real-time drawings are created based on your position and movement around the circle. The piece cycles through a set of drawing modes that reflect various spatial relationships. One mode connects all the participants with modulating lines. In another, your physical position corresponds to a 'pong' paddle in a circular version of the popular arcade game. Choose to cooperate or compete. By visualizing the connections and distances between people in a shared space, this piece externalizes our constant negotiation of that space. By creating possibilities for drawing or game playing, the piece also alters what is at stake in the negotiation.

Operate your own roller coaster using big rubber balls that loop high above the Kid’s Climber on a wire track. Flip switches to make the balls turn, intersect, jump through hoops and launch from a catapult. Send the balls back up from the Museum floor on a hand-operated lift.

Learn more about Henry Loustau.

Funded by The Perelman Family

King Iron and Queen Steel were made for the Children’s Museum out of found scrap items and junk. Were you a lucky guest at their "wedding" at the Museum in 2002?

Funded by Jane Werner and Bob Rutkowski in honor of their parents

In our outdoor Backyard, you can "play in the mud" at three large vessels of liquid clay agitated by air bubbling up within them. The clay erupts and gets tossed up, creating a constantly changing surface. You control the flow of air to change the liquid clay’s mood from gentle to explosive.

Use your body as art! Capture your silhouette or outline instantly on video as it’s projected in computer graphics in a solid color. Different color images in over 16 million colors build up, grow and rotate to create paintings and animation.

Learn more about Ed Tannenbaum.

Create your own virtual puppet show on a large video screen using our puppet collection, donated by Margo Lovelace. Since these puppets are too fragile to play with, you can play with their virtual versions using joysticks and buttons.

Plastic figurines representing many of life's big events swirl around in a water-filled jar. Viewed through the "movie screen" - a magnifying sheet, things seem bigger than they are...

Grab a handful of pebbles and drop them through the holes in the clear Plexiglas top of this wooden "drum" lined with nails. As the pebbles skip down the funnel of nails and out the bottom of the drum, their sound echoes chimes, rainfall and music.

Learn more about Ned Kahn.

See some of the Museum’s extensive puppet and art collections through these unique viewing components.

Funded by Thea and Dick Stover

Turn valves to control water flow as it tumbles and burbles over old chunks and artifacts from buildings from Pittsburgh’s history. Anyone can walk right up to a building and touch it, but this fountain brings interesting stone features and decorations down to eye-level and allows you to interact with them.

Take a ride on the most musical swingset in town! As you swing, your motion sets off metal chimes and pieces at the top of the swingset.