PA & NY 2023: Pittsburgh - Andrew Carnegie - Heinz Chapel - Cathedral of Learning

After spending a day immersed in the life of Henry Clay Frick, we next entered the world of Andrew Carnegie, starting with the Carnegie Museum of Art, a massive museum with over 30,000 works ranging from Old Masters all the way to Contemporary art.  Henry Moore’s “Reclining Figure” sculpture sits in the Fountain Plaza in front of the building.  Inside the building are major art installations in the main lobbies leading to the galleries.  Along the wall of the stairway in Scaife Lobby are two “Wall Drawings” by Sol Lewitt, regarded as a founder of the Minimalism and Conceptual art movements.  These are works consisting of large blocks of colour, customized to fit any wall space.  Down another narrow corridor along both walls are what the artist Lawrence Weiner calls “language sculptures”.  The ones installed here read “Ever Widening Circles of Shattering Glass” in big blue, block letters.  A wall hanging by Ghanaian artist El Anatsui titled “Three Angles” is made from post-consumer materials such as aluminum bottle caps.

A grand Sculpture Hall was inspired by the inner sanctuary of the Parthenon temple in Athens Greece, which was known for its large-scaled sculptures.  The sculpture hall in the museum was constructed with white marble from the same quarries as was used for the Parthenon with Ionic columns holding up the first and second floors.  Plaster casts of famous European sculptures line the wraparound balcony of the second floor, along with some special exhibits.  Most of the sculptures look like Neoclassical antiquities but one notable modern work stands out.  Nicole Eisenman’s “Prince of Swords” (2013) depicts a contemporary figure sitting with his feet dangling over the edge of the balcony and his blackened hands clutching a cell phone which he is busy looking at.  His larynx or voice box has been crystalized, as a comment on how digital modes of communication have replaced the art of speech.

The Hall of Architecture houses a collection of over 140 plaster cast replicas of architectural and historical art masterpieces from around the world.   Plaster casts were popular educational tools in the 19th century as they allowed people to appreciate masterpieces that were not accessible to them, as travel was more limited back then.  Andrew Carnegie collected these casts and by 1907, had amassed a collection of 144 architectural casts, 69 plaster reproductions of sculptures and 360 replicas in bronze.  He concentrated on iconic classical antiquity, Italian renaissance and gothic architecture including the Portal of the North Transept of the Cathedral of Sainte-Andre in Bordeaux, the Elgin Marbles, Venus de Milo, the Tomb of St.Francis in St. Paul Cathedral, Pisano’s pulpit in Sienna, the Caryatids of the Erechtheion in the Acropolis, and more.

The museum’s Collection of Miniatures opened to the public in 1969 in a special gallery designed to showcase a collection of around 350 objects donated by the estate of Sarah Mellon Scaife, niece of banker Andrew Mellon.  Eight windows in this gallery present miniature versions of rooms modeled after ones in Mrs. Scaife’s own homes, showcasing examples of furnishings, drapery, rugs, light fixtures, porcelain, silver and artwork from late 17th to early 20th centuries.  The dining room, complete with chandelier, candelabras and place settings on the table, a Chinese screen, fireplace and paintings on the walls, are a reproduction of the one in Penguin Court, the Scaife’s residence in Pennsylvania. Even the embroidery on dining chair upholstery is an exact match.

A 3-story Beaux-Arts styled Grand Staircase, modeled after one at the Palais Garnier Opera House in Paris is considered an architectural masterpiece.  Designed with marble steps, bannisters and Corinthian columns, the walls around the three levels are covered with an extensive mural by John White Alexander called “The Crowning of Labor” which covers almost 4000 square feet of wall space.  In multiple panels, the mural depicts industry, progress and hard work at the turn of the century.  The images blend symbolic imagery of cherubs and angels crowning an allegorical knight (which might represent Carnegie) with naturalistic depictions of farmers, labourers, steam engines and factories.

The panels on the third floor represent Pittsburgh's residents, with men, women, and children marching towards an enlightened future gained through education.  Painted between 1905-1908, the mural reflects “Carnegie’s vision of the steel industry and wealth gained through  industrial capitalism”. Over the years, the mural became covered with grime until it was restored in 1995.  A small, darkened section remains unrestored in order to show the effects of the soot from the steel mills.  The third floor exhibition galleries feature American Indian, Arctic Inuit, and Egyptian art.  Previewing the works in these galleries, the lobby of this floor features several large sculptures including a scene of Egyptian Pharaoh Sety making an offering to the God Horus, a totem pole, and a sculpture the Egyptian Goddess Sekhmet.

There is also an eclectic Collection of Furniture and Decorative Arts including some fun and unique pieces made from different materials and shaped in forms ranging from classic to unconventional.  Of course, I was most drawn to the quirky pieces.  I loved the chair that Finnish designer Eero Aarnio designed in early 2000’s and named “Tipi”.  Made of fiberglass, polyurethane foam, metal and wool, this chair shaped like a black baby chick with plastic lacquered feet seems more flash than function.  I wonder if its name means that it easily tips over if you try to sit on it.  Judey Kensley McKie’s 1994 “Monkey Settee” made from walnut and bronze has a set of monkeys as the arms of each seat with their curly tails forming the back. French designer Jean-Pierre Vitrac’s 1970 chrome-plated stainless steel flower lamp opens up like an opening flower bud. Each petal can be adjusted to control the direction and intensity of the light ray.  James Waring Carpenter’s 1993 cylindrically shaped “Bullet” magazine rack is made from chrome-plated and enameled steel with beautiful dark red coils (although it also came in other colours).  This mid-century modern design resembles a heating unit until magazines are actually placed in it. Belgian designer Henry van de Velde’s gorgeous 1904 Art Nouveau-styled chandelier is made from brass, copper and glass. I really liked the colour, shape and general concept of Opco Company’s 1935 chrome and aluminum ice gun, shaped to resemble a Buck Roger’s sci-fi ray gun which shoots ice into cocktail glasses in a “retro-futuristic” fashion.

The Carnegie Museum of Natural History is actually connected to the Carnegie Museum of Art from the inside.  While wandering around the massive building, we stumbled into the Bird Hall which has an impressive collection of taxidermy birds on display of various sizes and habitats.  Some of the more spectacular stuffed birds included the Great Turaco from Equatorial Africa with an upright black-blue crest that looks like spikey hair, Rhinoceros Hornbill from Southeast Asia with both a horn and a big bill or beak, and the extinct Dodo, a large flightless pigeon from Mauritius.  There were other smaller but beautiful, brightly coloured birds.  Then perhaps the most popular display with kids was a hilarious display of birds in popular culture including the Looney Tunes’ Tweety, Daffy Duck and Foghorn Leghorn, Opus the penguin from the comic strip Bloom County, and Fruit Loops cereal’s Toucan Sam.

We finally got to the section displaying the museum’s permanent art collection and quickly came across the most impressive installation which was Jean-Théodore Dupas’s Art Deco wall relief titled “Chariot of Aurora”.  This piece was originally created for the Grand Salon of the French ocean liner Normandie which launched in 1935.  Made from Japanese lacquer and metal leaf on plastic relief, the installation, which is 18 feet high and 26 feet wide, depicts a mythical scene of Aurora, the Goddess of Dawn, ascending into the sky in her chariot to begin a new day.  Dupas also incorporated modern elements including steamships, paddleboats and sea creatures to extend the work to symbolize the origin of navigation.  After this masterpiece sustained damage from repeated transatlantic crossings, the Carnegie Museum of Art acquired the piece and proceeded to restore it.  

Many of the paintings and sculptures on display in the permanent collection were similar to ones we had seen in other galleries, so I naturally gravitated to works that I had not seen before.  I liked Phyllida Barlow’s large “Upturned House” (2012) made from timber/plywood, cement and polystyrene, then painted in different colours and varnished.  Her 3-D attempt at cubism intersected the disciplines of painting, sculpture and architecture.  The figures in Belgian artist Reinhoud D'Haese’s 1968 Surrealistic bronze sculpture series “Que Dites-Vous?” (What Do You Say?) look part animal/part creature, meant to evoke absurd and dreamlike imagery similar to the images of Hieronymus Bosch.  Danish Robert Jacobsen’s humorous metal sculpture “Le Roi de la Faim” (The King of Hunger) seems to be in a similar absurd vein where the king’s horse has a spoon and fork for ears. In terms of painting, my favourite was Carlo Carrà’s The Swimmers (1911) where he depicts clothed swimmers in a geometric, cubist style with the strong diagonal lines of the figures and the waves creating a sense of motion. Surprisingly there were even a few pieces of furniture in midst all the paintings and sculptures.  I loved the ornate “Garden Chair” (circa 1878) by British designer Thomas Jeckyll made of painted iron with mahogany, although I would think the chair is too beautiful to leave outside.  There was also the beautiful 3-paneled screen titled “Morning Glories” (ca 1900) painted by Thomas Wilmer Dewing to depict three female figures in classical drapery surrounded by nature.

Two special exhibitions were on display during our visit.  The first was titled “Imprinting in Their Time: Japanese Printmakers 1912-2022”.   This exhibit explores Japan’s graphic art tradition through examples from 110 years of printmaking, showing how the techniques, technology used, and subject matter changed over time, influenced by international encounters, new sources of inspiration and artistic motivation.  We saw examples of three different emerging styles: Between 1915-1960, Shin-hanga (new prints) maintained the ancient collaborative process of ukiyo-e prints where an artist designs an image but a different carver creates the woodblocks and yet another craftsman produces the print.  Shin-hanga differs from ukiyo-e by incorporating Western influences on light and mood and are usually larger in size.  Sōsaku-hanga (creative prints) gained prominence in the 1950s-60s when artists started performing all the steps in the process themselves from design to carving to printing, thus embracing a more individualistic, self-expressive approach that is closer to Western art.  Finally contemporary prints refer to works by artists starting from 1980 to present day, which encompasses a wider, more diverse range of styles and subject matters while some artists may focus more on specific subjects or themes.

Regardless of which new phase of Japanese prints were on display, I found them all to be beautiful and very creative.  I especially liked seeing how the influence of the old, traditional prints of the past can still be seen as they influence the new esthetics of the present.

The second special exhibit was a retrospective on the works of American figurative painter Joan Brown (1933-1990) who frequently referenced her own life and experiences in her art.  Brown’s early oil on canvas works in the 1950s and early 60s involved impasto, the technique of applying thick layers of paint so that it stands out from the surface.  Her 1963 painting “Noel on Pony with Cloud” is based on a photo of her son riding a pony at a county fair but is also influenced by Picaso’s painting Paulo on a Donkey (1923).  By late 1960s, Brown totally shifted gears and started painting in a flat, vibrant style.   Brown was fascinated with cats, painting them in scenery, self-portraits of herself with cats (and fish?), and even herself depicted as a cat, as she explored her identity through animal symbolism.  The cat symbolism increased and morphed after visiting Egypt where the Egyptian cat goddess Baset and the sphinx became a recurring motif, exploring spirituality, ancient cultures and the human condition in a surrealistic manner.

Brown was an avid swimmer who swam in the San Francisco Bay and participated in amateur competitions.  Her love for the sport was incorporated in her paintings and sculptural pieces.  In 1975, a frightening event occurred when Joan almost drowned during a swim from Alcatraz Island to Aquatic Park due to a passing freighter that generated huge waves.  She dealt with this trauma by painting multiple pictures of herself caught in dark, swirling waters.  Joan Brown painted herself with third husband Gordon Cook and their dog Rufus six months after their wedding.  She also produced works depicting their love of dancing including “Dancers in a City #2” which shows a woman dancing with the outline of a male partner, the San Francisco skyline silhouetted in the background and a musical score swirling at their feet. The woman’s dress is actually a piece of material pasted on to turn this work into a collage.  Another sculptural piece she made out of cardboard, gouache and string, then painted with acrylics and oil depicts a Luxury Liner with people happily dancing on deck.

In addition to the Art Museum, Andrew Carnegie’s footprint can be found throughout downtown Pittsburgh. Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university founded in 1900 with strong ties to the University of Pittsburgh. The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh is a public library system established in 1890 which has branches in neighbourhoods throughout the city.  Andrew Carnegie’s generous donations saw the creation of over 2500 public libraries throughout United States, Canada, U.K, Ireland and other countries. The Carnegie Music Hall was built in 1895 and seats about 1900 people. The sculptures in front of the building on either side of the grand staircase are of Johann Sebastian Bach and William Shakespeare.  Finally the Carnegie Museum of Natural History was founded in 1897 with over 22 million species in its collection focusing on paleontology, anthropology, botany, zoology and more.  In front of this impressive building are Galileo and Michaelangelo, as well as a life-size model of a Diplodocus dinosaur. While we did not tour this museum directly, since it was accessible from instead the Art Museum, we ended up seeing a few sections of it including the Bird Hall and the Arctic Inuit Art Gallery.

We saw some more interesting sights while down by the Pittsburgh University campus grounds.  Alphabetosaurus, another one of the sculptures left over from the 2003 DinoMite Days fundraiser, is situated across from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.  It was decorated by the teachers and students of Phillips Elementary school who covered the sculpture with brightly coloured alphabet letters, thus earning the dinosaur its name. Nearby, the Mary Schenley Memorial Fountain, also known as “A Song to Nature”, is located in Schenley Park. The bronze sculptures depict Pan, a half-goat half human deity being awakened by the nymph Harmony playing the lyre, celebrating the beauty of the park.   A life-sized bronze sculpture of physician, surgeon and researcher Thomas Starzl sitting on a bench can be found on the University of Pittsburgh campus, across from the Cathedral of Learning, which we would tour later in the day.  Starzl (1926-2017) was known as the father of modern transplants and considered one of the most prolific scientists in the world with over 2200 articles and 4 books published.

Also found on the University of Pittsburgh campus is Heinz Memorial Chapel, a small non-denominational chapel donated to the university by Henry.J.Heinz in honour of his mother Anna.  Built in the French Gothic Revival style in 1938, it features intricate stonework and wood carvings as well as 23 beautiful stained glass windows which are amongst the tallest in the world at 73 feet.  The chapel is open to visitors during the day and is a popular wedding venue.  It is also used for funerals and university events.

One of the highlights of our stay in Pittsburgh was our visit and tour of the gorgeous Cathedral of Learning, a 42-story Late Gothic Revival 535 feet skyscraper that is the tallest educational building in the West and the second tallest in the world.  Sitting on land donated by the Mellon family, commissioned by Chancellor John Bowman in 1921 and completed in 1934, the steel-frame structure covered with limestone contains more than 2000 rooms with 36 floors used for educational purposes and the rest for administrative offices.  I wondered what the elevator bottleneck was like when traversing between classrooms over so many floors!  The ground floor has high vaulted ceilings including a 4-storied vaulted common room and study hall, stained glass windows, ornate cast iron gates and ornate stone balconies.

The most unique aspect of this educational facility is the existence of the 31 Nationality Rooms that occupy the first three floors. These are classrooms each designed to represent the nationality or ethnic culture of a different Pittsburgh community.  The Nationality Room Program was founded in 1926 to promote community involvement in the building’s construction.  According to the founding principles of the program, each room had to depict an era prior to 1787, which was the year the University of Pittsburgh was founded. Each room was designed, planned for and most importantly, totally funded by volunteer groups from the representative ethnic community, using native craftsmen and including authentic artifacts and materials to meet the time period mandate.  The University provides the space and upkeep once the room is completed. Students actually have classes in these rooms, which provide special learning environments that immerse them in rich, diverse heritages.  Given how beautiful the rooms are, I’m surprised that the students are not distracted, at least at first.  One of these students acted as our tour guide as she showed us some of the Nationality Rooms that did not have a class running at the time.

We saw the German room which was designed in 16th Century German Renaissance style and is one of the few rooms that was modeled after actual classrooms—in this case, Renaissance-era German university classrooms based on the University of Heidelberg.  The room is covered with wood paneling and stained glass windows depicting ten Grimms fairytales including Frog Prince, Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White, Hansel and Gretel and Rumpelstilzchen.  Rows of wooden chairs with ornately carved backs and attached writing surfaces face a lectern and blackboard where the teacher would stand. Crests of Germany’s oldest universities (Heidelberg and Leipzig) sit above each door.  Names of German-speaking authors, artists, scientists, philosophers and musicians as well as images constructed from wood marquetry representing characters from German Literature are carved into the walnut woodwork.  The ceiling is painted with crests of German cities and the floor is made of oak.  German books, porcelain and other cultural knickknacks sit in a glassed display case.  Interestingly, the room was constructed between 1927 to 1938 without any consultation with Germany (unlike other Nationality rooms) because of the unrest in the country at that time, right before the outbreak of WWII.

Completed in 1943, the French Room is the only one of the Nationality Rooms that did not conform to the mandate of designing for a pre 1787 era.  Instead, the French room is designed in a 19th century Empire style and influenced by the earlier Palace of Versailles. It reflects a time of great glory for France during Napoleon’s successful campaigns in Greece, Italy and Egypt.  The white walls are decorated with gilded leaves, rosettes and griffons, complemented by the gold drapes around the windows, the parquet floor pattern reflect rooms in the Palace of Versailles and crystal chandeliers hang from the ceiling.  The students’ seats are upholstered with royal blue leather while the attached writing tables were made of mahogany.  As these are working classrooms, we were allowed to sit in the chairs in each room and the padded French chairs were much more comfortable than the wooden ones in the German room.  Carvings in the legs of professor’s desk are made to look like Sphinxes with paws as feet.  The 16th Century teal-blue and gold  tapestry on the back wall depicts an allegorical woodland scene including a prancing unicorn, birds and other animals.  The display case contains medallions, books and pictures of prominent French authors, painters and musicians of the time. The location of the French room was chosen specifically for a view outside its windows which looks upon the Heinz Memorial Chapel, itself an example of French Gothic architecture.

The Austrian Room is designed in the 18th Century Baroque style, modeled after the Hadynsaal, a concert hall inside the Austrian palace Schloss Esterházy where Joseph Hadyn served as master of the chapel choir from 1766 to 1778. As a result, this room pays particular attention to musical achievement during the Austrian empire with a plaque listing Austrian composers born between 1170 and 1895 hanging on a wall.  In the corridor above the door is a crest of a double-headed Habsburg eagle holding a sword and a crown in its talons.  The walls are covered with royal-red tapestried wallpaper with floral designs with matching drapery covering the windows.  The mirrored doors of a cabinet between the two windows open up to review a chalkboard.  The columns and panels are decorated with gilded leaf designs and the parquet floor is inlaid with a starburst pattern.  The chairs, made of solid maple covered with coats of white lacquer with seats upholstered in royal red damask and long table were modeled after the dining room in Vienna’s Hofburgh Place.  The highlight of this room is the set of ceiling paintings which depict scenes from Roman mythology, similar to those in the Hadynsaal.   Commissioned in 1979 and dedicated in 1996, this is one of the later rooms to be built.

The Chinese Room was completed in 1939 and reflects the 18th Century architecture found in the Forbidden City in Beijing.  It is dedicated to the teaching ideologies of Confucius. Accordingly, the teacher and students sit together at a moon-shaped teak table, rather like the round table of Camelot where there is no head of the table.  The back of each teak student's chair is carved with a character associated with a Confucian trait representing the qualities of an educated man.  The teacher’s chair is inscribed with the secret of good teaching “by inspiring gradually and steadily”.  Black lacquered doors open up to review a blackboard with Buddhist ornamentation inscribed inside. The ceiling panels depict dragons with pearls of wisdom in their mouths, phoenixes, peony (motan) flowers and the five-clawed “Golden Imperial Dragon of the Universe” in the centre panel.  Four blue wall beams are decorated with gold characters naming 29 people who contributed to Chinese civilization including philosophers and poets. The walls and door are painted with a red lacquer and the stone structure surrounding the door is decorated with stone lions, plum blossoms and the saying “Humility of mind goes with loftiness of character”.  A large slate portrait of Confucius hangs on one of the walls. This was the room in particular that I would have found most distracting as a student, since there are so many interesting elements to look at.

The Syria/Lebanon Room is one of two rooms that are for display only because of the fragility and pricelessness of the artifacts inside. Locked paneled glass doors allow passersby to look into the room but our tour guide opened the doors so that we could have a closer view.  This was originally a 18th Century Damascus-styled library or reception room built in 1782 in a wealthy Damascan merchant’s home before being moved intact to the Cathedral of Learning in 1941.  The walls and ceiling are made from linden wood which was then covered with painted gesso and covered with floral-patterned gold and silver leaf.  Directly across from the door to the room is a vaulted prayer niche or “mihrab” which traditionally would hold a prayer rug and the Koran. Satin-covered sofa cushions sitting atop ornate marble foundations are situated on both sides of the room, while a large rug with a round table holding some drinking vessels sit in the centre.  An old copper mosque lamp with glass wells to hold oil, water and wicks hangs from the ceiling  The marble flooring slopes towards the entrance where visitors would remove their shoes before entering.  This was a very special viewing of a room that would not have been accessible without our tour.

We saw several other rooms on our tour, and they were each so wonderful that we wished we could have seen all thirty-one of them!  There was the Romanesque-styled Irish Room which had limestone walls and arches carved with human and animal masks, intricately carved wooden furniture including chairs with dog heads attached to each stile and a replica of the Book of Kells.  The Greek Room represents the classical architecture of 5th Century BCE Athens with its marble Ionic columns and coffered ceiling decorated with sunbeam pattern in each square. The Italian Room is designed to represent a 15th Century Tuscan monastery with coffered ceiling decorated with a gold-leaf rosette in each panel modeled after San Domenico Convent in Pesaro.  A large mural of  Elena Piscopia, the first woman in the world to receive a university degree, is hung on the back wall. The students sit on wooden monastery benches with multiple seats and writing platforms per bench.  We also visited the Polish, Norwegian, Czech and American Rooms.  There were a few rooms that we tried to go into but there were classes running at the time, so we could only admire the beautiful doors.  This tour of the Cathedral of Learning was such a fabulous experience.  While we saw many fun and interesting sights in Pittsburgh, this was the most special for me.  If we are ever back in Pittsburgh, I would love to go back and visit more Nationality Rooms.