Viva Vetro! Glass Alive!
Venice and America
May 12–September 16, 2007
Heinz Galleries

Venice has been a preeminent glass center since the 16th century. European factories and designers for centuries have emulated the city's success by adapting or copying designs associated with the Venetian masters. In the second half of the 20th century, American artists and designers also started looking to Venice for inspiration, many of them traveling to Venice to work directly with the masters in the factories. These Americans returned to the States and invigorated the country's rapidly growing and flourishing studio glass movement. This flourishing interest in the art of glassmaking prompted Venetian masters to travel to the United States to teach and also to learn; a dialogue between artists began. Venice instilled in the Americans discipline, technical skills, and a new appreciation for color. America gave the Venetians the freedom to challenge and to question.

This exhibition, part of Pittsburgh’s 2007 Year of Glass celebration, will examine the links between Venice and America and their significance, from mid-1950s sculptor Robert Willson’s exploratory visit to Murano and the commissioning of work from American designers by the Venini factory to present-day artists, such as Lino Tagliapietra and Josiah McElheny. The exhibition will present approximately 100 works, which will also be illustrated in the accompanying catalogue.

Viva Vetro! Glass Alive! is organized by Carnegie Museum of Art. The exhibition is supported by Pittsburgh Celebrates Glass. Additional support was provided by the Henry L. Hillman Fund, The Fellows of Carnegie Museum of Art, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

The exhibition catalogue was made possible by The Beal Publication Fund and the Henry Lea Hillman, Jr. Foundation.

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Masters of American Drawings and Watercolors: Foundations of the Collection, 1904–1922
June 16–October 7, 2007
Works on Paper Gallery

On view are 75 rarely seen American drawings and watercolors from the superb collection gathered by Carnegie Museum of Art’s first director, John W. Beatty in the first two decades of the 20th century. The light-sensitive nature of works on paper prohibits their regular display, and several objects in this exhibition have rarely been on view. The exhibition includes the work of such well-known artists as Winslow Homer, James McNeill Whistler, William Glackens, and Frederick Childe Hassam.

General support for the exhibition program at Carnegie Museum of Art is provided by grants from the Heinz Endowments and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

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Designed to be Lit
June 30, 2007–February 10, 2008
Treasure Room

Over the past 300 years, artistic and technological developments have transformed the methods and devices we use to provide light. Whether illuminated by candlelight, oil, or incandescent bulb, these devices play decorative and functional roles in public and private interior settings. This exhibition will highlight the museum’s extensive collection of candlesticks and lamps, including several recent acquisitions, while exploring the historic evolution of lighting forms and materials.

General support for the exhibition program at Carnegie Museum of Art is provided by grants from the Heinz Endowments and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

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Forum 60: Rivane Neuenschwander
July 14–October 28, 2007
Forum Gallery

Through poetic and playful means, Rivane Neuenschwander’s work explores the blurred boundaries between the natural and constructed world. Quarta-Feira de Cinzas/Epilogue (2006), shown here in the exhibition Forum 60: Rivane Neuenschwander, is a short video depicting ants on a forest floor carrying sugar-soaked pieces of bright confetti in and around their colony. The work was made in collaboration with Brazilian filmmaker Cao Guimarães and is accompanied by an experimental soundtrack by the Brazilian music group O Grivo. Together the sound and visual components form a lyrical metaphor for the interaction between manmade and natural processes and behaviors.

Collaboration, chance, and the unpredictable results of natural organic processes form the core of Neuenschwander’s “ethereal materialism,” a phrase she uses to describe the generation of poetic experiences from ordinary events and materials in beautiful, subtle, and often ephemeral ways.

General support for the exhibition program at Carnegie Museum of Art is provided by grants from the Heinz Endowments and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

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