Major support for this exhibition has been provided by The Pittsburgh Foundation, The Henry L. Hillman Foundation, and The Women's Committee of Carnegie Museum of Art.

Additional support has been provided by the R. K. Mellon Family Foundation.

General support for the museum's exhibition program is provided by The Heinz Endowments and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

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Mel Bochner, a native of Pittsburgh and graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, is considered a pioneering figure in the Post-Minimal and Conceptual art movements. Best known for drawings and installations that explore the abstract concept of measurement, Bochner also experimented with the photographic medium. His early and rarely seen photographs from the 1960s explore the nature of a select group of objects in series, scale, and perspective. He also pushed beyond the conventional rectangular format of the photographic print, creating multi-panel and large-format pieces that produce visual effects.

This retrospective survey documents the importance of Bochner's photography in the formation of Conceptual art, a late 1960s development in artistic practice that privileges the idea behind the work of art over the physical object. Bochner was among several pioneering Conceptual artists engaged in the photographic medium. Its neutrality, limited scale, and potential for reproduction suited their interest in "dematerializing" or challenging the singular, "rarefied" nature of art objects. The exhibition was organized by the Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge.

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The building must do and be many things at once; tensions, ambiguities, and contrasts are results which make architecture; a work of architecture has subplots as well as a plot.
--Robert Venturi

Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown are partners in one of the most influential architectural design and planning firms of the last half-century. Outspoken critics of austere mid-20th-century design, they have infused modernism with a new energy and vitality inspired by Pop Art, popular culture, vernacular architecture, and historical styles. With bold and unorthodox combinations of geometry, color and pattern, they have created an architecture out of the ordinary.

Known equally for their buildings and their thoughtfully considered, ethically informed proposals for urban design, they have urged architects to respect the real conditions of people's lives and respond creatively in readily understood stylistic terms. Their playfulness, iconoclasm, and use of historical references, have prompted critics to herald Venturi and Scott Brown as the "founders of Postmodernism." Firmly rejecting this title, Venturi asserts, "There are two ways to be creative: to invent new forms, and to use old forms in new ways. We have chosen to emphasize the latter approach in our design."

Out of the Ordinary, organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is the first retrospective of the firm's work in architecture, urban planning, and the decorative arts. Comprising more than 150 drawings, models, photographs, and decorative arts objects, the exhibition surveys their extraordinary careers, from Venturi's earliest commissions in 1958 to more recent major projects, such as the Irving and Betty Abrams house in Pittburgh (1979-81), The Seattle Art Museum (1984-91), the Sainsbury Wing of The National Gallery in London (1985-91), and the Hotel Mielmonte Nikko Kirifuri, Nikko, Japan
(1992-97).

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A visit to Carnegie Museum of Art's Neapolitan Presepio, a large-scale, elaborate Nativity, has been a Pittsburgh holiday tradition since 1957. Handmade between 1700 and 1830, the Presepio is filled with lifelike figures and colorful details that recreate the Nativity in a vibrant and detailed setting depicting 18th-century Italian village life. More than 100 superbly modeled human figures and angels, along with animals, accessories, and architectural elements, are on view in the Hall of Architecture with the annual display of holiday trees, decorated by the Women's Committee.

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It's Not Just Mud! celebrates ceramic art objects in the museum's collection and the craftsmen, modelers, and artists who created the varied vessels and sculpture on view. The exhibition includes stoneware, earthenware, and porcelain objects from ancient Greek vases to contemporary works of art. Basic ceramic techniques have remained unchanged for thousands of years, but this historical survey reveals the breadth of artistic expression that has been achieved in the ceramic medium.

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