These three giant bass turn with the wind above the Children's Museum's main parking lot. The 14-foot long sculptures, each weighing about 400 pounds, greet families as they begin their adventure at the Museum.

This sculpture received its name through a contest held for our visitors; the winners were Cameron and Colin Baverso, Larissa Gavlak, Aaron Kosmach and Elizabeth Siefert.

Concept Design by Elizabeth and Chris Siefert, Sculpture Design, Fabrication and Production by Brian Reneski, Lead Painter Sandy Kessler, Fabrication by Brian Reneski, Jon Laidecker and Chris Siefert. Painters Jon Laidecker and Holland Williams, Mechanical Design and Engineering by Greg Baltus of Standard Robot Company, Metal Fabrication by Ray Appleby of Technique Architectural Products, Installation by Mascaro Construction Company.

Look up in the the Museum's Rotunda in the Studio to see more light, a new installation fluttering above visitors' heads as they create art. 890 strands of pink and orange surveyor's flagging tape are suspended in mid-air in a 28'x28' configuration constructed of 9,800 paper clips. 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.

Artist Ned Kahn collaborated with architects Koning Eizenberg Architecture to create an art piece that transforms the polycarbonate screen on the new building into a giant wind sculpture. Tens of thousands of hinged flaps are attached to the screen and reflect wind currents in a dynamic way, making the building appear to move and shimmer. Ned is a 2003 recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship.

Funded by the Katherine Mabis McKenna Foundation

Meet our Great Blue Heron as soon as you walk in the door! This 13-foot tall sculpture is created from metal and discarded gas station signs, assembled in an ingeniuous way to form a vibrant, colorful bird that observes visitors from above in the Museum's lobby.

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

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

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 museum visitors by creating visual consequences to their bodies' locations. As people approach a circular floor projection, dynamic real-time drawings are created based on people's positions and movements 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, users' physical positions correspond to a 'pong' paddle in a circular version of the popular arcade game. Visitors can 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 a series of 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. A hand-operated lift sends the balls back up from the Museum floor.

Learn more about Henry Loustau.

Funded by The Perelman Family

Local folk artist Devon Smith created a robot couple, King Iron and Queen Steel, especially for the Children’s Museum in 2002. These unique six-foot-tall creatures, made from found scrap items and junk, were "wed" in a whimsical public ceremony at the Museum.

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

This outdoor sculpture in the Backyard consists of three steel vessels holding semi-fluid clay slip which is constantly agitated by rising air from the bottom of the vessels. As the liquid clay erupts and is tossed up, you see a constantly changing topography on the semi-solid surface of the pools. You control the amount of air injected into the clay by turning a wheel, creating a range of moods from a gentle murmur to a provocative explosion.

Use your body as art! This piece captures your silhouette or outline instantly on video and projects it as computer graphics in a solid color. Different color images amass, grow and rotate to create paintings and animation from a palette of over 16 million colors.

Learn more about Ed Tannenbaum.

Create your own virtual puppet show on a large video screen using the Children's Museum's puppet collection, donated by Margo Lovelace. Museum staff collaborated with ETC to create artwork where visitors could see and manipulate these fragile puppets using three-dimensional computer models. You pick the puppets, scenery, music and the way the puppets move, and direct a puppet show 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.

This artwork brings some of the Children’s Museum’s extensive puppet and art collections to visitors through a series of unique viewing components. Forest is a grouping of acrylic tube "trees"; the Bridge is a ramped floor located in the Nursery that displays pieces under glass, allowing a unique vantage point for crawling toddlers; Screens are open shelves set behind acrylic; and Salons are displays for two-dimensional artwork.

Learn more about Paul Rosenblatt.

Funded by Thea and Dick Stover

In this unique fountain, visitors turn valves to control water flow as it tumbles and burbles over old chunks and artifacts of Pittsburgh’s architectural and stone 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. Crisscrossing steel pipes, valves and the water-tower structure itself echo a view all Pittsburghers have shared as they pass by the city's abandoned steel mills and industrial sites. Allegheny Waterworks lets you interact with a part of the city you normally could not.

What appears as a standard swingset is actually an interactive metal sculpture from the artist’s Ponko Series. As children swing, their motion sets off a symphony of sound from metal chimes and pieces set at the top of the swingset. Musical Swingset was originally installed in the Museum’s Courtyard in 1993.