But without intervention, the scientific phenomenon that created Oxidation may be its undoing. In 2020, staff at The Andy Warhol Museum discovered mysterious puddles below the painting and a new drip pattern on its surface. It was as if the chemical reaction that produced the artwork had been reactivated.

The conservator at The Warhol, in collaboration with mineralogists and forensic scientists, is searching for clues as to how to stop or even reverse Oxidation’s changes. Their work is documented in an exhibition on view through the end of 2024 called Altered States.

Ironically, none of this would surprise Warhol himself. In a 1985 interview with art historian Benjamin Buchloh, Warhol described how paintings in his Oxidation series melted under the hot lights when exhibited at the Paris Art Fair FIAC at the Grand Palais, even likening them to religious iconography.

“They never stopped dripping because the lights were so hot. Then you can understand why those holy pictures cry all the time—it must have something to do with the material they were painted on or something like that,” he remarked, seemingly unfazed.

While Warhol signaled his acquiescence to the painting’s degradation, that kind of change shouldn’t happen under The Warhol’s stewardship, says Rikke Foulke, associate conservator of paintings.

Photo: Bryan Conley

“If we continue to let Oxidation drip, we may not have a painting for the next generation,” she added.

The popularity of the painting, made by a man credited with declaring, “In the future, everybody will be world-famous for 15 minutes,” has connected with a younger generation of art lovers on apps like TikTok, the social media platform known for short-form videos. A 30-second TikTok video about Oxidation—which was produced by The Warhol—has garnered 63,000 likes and more than 700 comments.

What’s apparent in the TikTok discourse regarding Warhol’s artistic output and Oxidation touches on what has endeared his work for generations: Warhol challenges the very concept of what can be defined as art and who can consider himself an artist. 

“Why don’t they teach this stuff at school?” says one commenter. “I definitely would have become an artist.”

Groundbreaking Conservation

It was the summer of 2020 when staff members at The Warhol first saw the stains under Oxidation, a line of coffee-colored, circle-shaped drops and a larger splotch in the shape of West Virginia below the painting’s right corner. After they notified Amber Morgan, director of collections and exhibitions, she went over to the painting to see if there was a ceiling leak.

There wasn’t. 

Identifying the source of a problem with a piece of art is rarely that easy, Morgan says. For almost 25 years, she’s managed artworks at The Warhol and Carnegie Museum of Art and has seen her share of issues. 

“Generally, artists don’t think of preservation when creating work; they will make what they’re going to make,” she notes. 

Carnegie Museums staff are trained to handle collection-related emergencies and the initial steps are fairly straightforward, even if the ultimate solution is not. First, document the conditions of the affected artwork. Next, examine the rest of the collections for signs of damage or impending damage. Finally, determine the next steps to prevent future issues.

Many materials popular in modern artwork—not just artwork made with urine—suffer from an inherent vice: disintegration due to their inborn characteristics. 

“It can be infuriating as a museum person to think, ‘What is the future of this object?’” Morgan says. “One example:  Art made with newsprint is difficult to preserve because it is made of the cheapest pulp paper and becomes yellow and brittle when it ages. Art made with pantyhose, with rubber tires—it’s all going to deteriorate.” 

And therein lies the challenge for Foulke and her colleagues: How much of what’s happening to Oxidation is inherent vice? How can the painting’s degradation be slowed down, stopped, or even reversed? 

Photo: Bryan Conley

With a generous Bank of America Art Conservation Project grant, Foulke and her peers are performing groundbreaking research to uncover the answers. Visitors to Altered States can view the clues Foulke and her team are following in their quest to uncover the mysteries within Oxidation. On display are mock-up canvases created by Warhol staff, canisters of metallic flakes used by Warhol in his series, and sample minerals—on loan from Carnegie Museum of Natural History—that were used in the making of ancient pigments. 

“Altered States is a showcase of how conservation overlaps with art, history, chemistry, and minerals,” Foulke says.

Their findings will inform critical conservation work of The Warhol’s Oxidation series holdings and additional Oxidation paintings in public and private collections.

Foray into the Abstract

Warhol’s Oxidation series is a major departure from his groundbreaking Pop art screen prints. Those images, easily replicated and mass produced, spotlight the aesthetics of everyday objects and celebrity publicity shots. However, the paintings that make up the Oxidation series challenge viewers to take a closer look at a commonplace sight—oxidation is everywhere, from rust on car doors to the green fuzz on old pennies.

The paintings in the Oxidation series are Warhol’s first foray into abstract expressionism and are believed to be inspired by Jackson Pollock’s work—paintings resembling scribble-scrabble drips and splashes of paint. The places where urine blotched and mottled the canvas contain green, blue, and charcoal hues—vivid, large-scale rust spots made into art.

Warhol was an artist of high concept, even if his execution appeared simple. Creating paintings through chemical reactions takes dedicated study, intentionality, and experimentation. 

The work may appear random to an uninitiated viewer, but Warhol took great care when creating the Oxidation paintings, says Foulke.

In creating the paintings, Warhol and his assistants mixed together dry metallic powder with water and an acrylic binder. They then laid the canvases on the floor, coated them in copper paint, and urinated on them while the paint was still wet. The chemicals in the urine reacted with the metal substrate, producing oxides that create unique patterns.

Photo: Bryan Conley

Foulke notes that the people who contributed urine to the series—Warhol’s friends and associates—even adopted an experimental vitamin regime to determine whether the chemicals present in their urine could influence the colors that emerged when applied to the treated canvases.  

Longtime Warhol collaborator and Factory member Ronnie Cutrone mentioned the method in a 1998 interview with gallerist Daniel Blau.

“They [the paintings in the Oxidation series] are just scientific experiments. The first chemical was B complex, which we put into our urine,” he told Blau.

“Warhol pointed out that a person can’t just go and urinate on a canvas expecting the result to be interesting. A contributor must develop their skills for a successful composition,” says Foulke. “Warhol would view the results and cut up canvases into individual pieces to distinguish the most interesting parts,” she adds.

Cross-Disciplinary Analysis

To understand how and why Oxidation came to evolve more than 40 years after it was painted, Foulke started at the birth of the painting. Following Warhol’s protocol, she recreated the Oxidation series.

The Warhol Museum Archive is the most extensive collection of Warhol ephemera in existence—more than 8,000 cubic feet of material housing half a million objects, including notebooks, sculptures, audio tapes, and canisters of the metallic powder used in the Oxidation series, and scraps cut from the Oxidation canvases from when they were stretched onto frames.

The Warhol’s archive and recorded interviews with Warhol’s Factory assistant Ronnie Cutrone were integral to producing mock-ups of the Oxidation series. Using a recipe documented by Cutrone, Foulke mixed metallic powder with water and acrylic paint and applied it to several canvases. Then, using a pipette, Foulke applied urine donated by The Warhol’s staff to the canvas. 

The mock-ups and scraps were delivered to two of The Warhol’s partners for analysis: Carnegie Museum of Natural History and RJ Lee Group, an industrial forensics analytical laboratory and scientific consulting firm.

Foulke tapped Travis Olds, assistant curator of minerals at the Museum of Natural History, to learn about the mineral-based pigments in Oxidation. Warhol was hardly the first artist to use urine in the composition of an artwork. Notably, Pliny the Elder, a first century A.D. scholar interested in minerals, recorded a recipe for verdigris, a blueish-green pigment using copper and urine. 

“So many materials, like the paint and the metal that goes into art, are mineral-derived; a mineralogist can lend insight into the history of an artwork,” Olds explains.

Stewardship of The Warhol’s collection has long benefited from the experts of the Museum of Natural History, including entomologists who support The Warhol’s integrated pest management program and taxidermists who help maintain and preserve the stuffed lion and stuffed dog, Cecil, in the museum’s collection.

“Working with artists and conservators that think and approach problems differently than me is fun,” says Olds. “They bring a new perspective, and we make a great team to try and fix them.” 

During his tenure at the Museum of Natural History, Olds has consulted on multiple art conservation projects, including the impact of fingerprints on Meg Webster’s sculpture, Nose Cone, a stainless steel conic cylinder at Carnegie Museum of Art. He has also helped recreate an ancient pigment whose recipe was believed to have been lost to history—the vibrant “Egyptian blue.”

“As a mineralogist, I characterize materials,” Olds explains. “I want to understand what’s in them, what atoms are there, how much of each atom, and then how they’re arranged. Once you know that, you know so much about the material.”

With Oxidation, Olds used a scanning electron microscope to capture an image of the paint 100 microns in size, about the width of the strand of hair. Electron microscopy is a unique type of microscopy in that it uses electrons to look at the surfaces of objects and their composition.

He wanted to know more about the composition of the paint and, to use an unscientific word, the “goo” that formed on the canvas when it dripped. Olds describes the goo as the “organic junk left after the urine degraded and mingled.”

He found that the samples contained a medley of elements, including copper, potassium, carbon, oxygen, chlorine, and sodium. 

“When I see things like sodium, potassium, and chlorine in a sample, my mind goes to salt. And, of course, urine has a large salt content,” says Olds. 

For Olds, the presence of salt is a red flag to understanding why Oxidation began deteriorating—some salts like to absorb water from the air. As for the goo, it contains copper, but it needs further analysis to determine its other components, he says.

Unlocking Mysteries

Another clue to unlocking the transformation of Oxidation lies in The Warhol’s HVAC data. In the days before the drips were discovered below the painting, the HVAC system suffered a mechanical failure that caused it to go offline for a few hours. The museum’s climate dramatically changed, creating what Foulke describes as a perfect storm: The humidity and temperature in the gallery rose; when the climate control system returned online, the air cooled and released moisture, triggering Oxidation’s chemical reaction.

The forensic scientists behind RJ Lee Group, whose labs are in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, have extensive experience recreating atmospheric conditions. The company consults for a diverse clientele, from casino owners concerned about the integrity of their keno balls to manufacturers who want to understand why their product unexpectedly broke.

One avenue of analysis they’re pursuing to learn about the changes exhibited by Oxidation is subjecting the scraps and mock-ups to an accelerated aging process. They can recreate the temperature and humidity conditions in the gallery the day the HVAC system went offline and even process the samples to see how 50 years of aging will impact the painting.

To do this, the scientists place specimens in an aging chamber resembling a large refrigerator with racks inside, and then subject them to atmospheric extremes that alter the chamber’s temperature and moisture level.

“If we continue to let Oxidation drip, we may not have a painting for the next generation.“

Rikke Foulke, The Warhol’s associate conservator of paintings

Scientists also attempt to understand the chemistry that created Oxidation’s colors.

“We’re talking about chemical reactions that are not really controlled,” says Chris Hefferan, an applied physicist and consulting scientist. “Warhol and his associates knew that if brass met urine, it would create a color effect. But there are subtleties in the colors resulting from a spectrum of compounds present in the artwork. We weren’t expecting that. 

“I think the complexity of it has been the most surprising on my end; we’re still kind of feeling our way through it. There are continuous variables to consider,” he adds.

In the coming months, the RJ Lee team plans to analyze cross sections of the samples—that is, the thinnest edge of the samples. In theory, this approach will help them better analyze the paint material separate from the canvas.

“We think that by viewing a cross section, we’ll see the salts on top of the colors produced by the urine separate  from the acrylic-metallic paint layer,” says Hefferan.

“If I were to analyze a Rembrandt or Picasso, I would be working with pigments based upon a specific set of minerals; we know what we expect to see in the red paint on those artists’ paintings,” Hefferan adds. “With Oxidation, we’re still trying to understand the chemistry that creates the colors. Once we understand the chemical reactions behind those pigments, we can use that characterization to understand what might happen in other circumstances.”

It’s unclear how much longer this work will take. The results from RJ Lee could lead to other avenues for investigation, Morgan notes. Regardless of how long it takes, she and Foulke hope this research is useful for conserving Oxidation paintings in other collections.

Foulke also recognizes an inherent contradiction in conserving Oxidation. As stewards of the collection, The Warhol needs to make sure the paintings are around for generations to come. But they also need to honor the artist’s intention.

“I’m not sure if there is a treatment we can do [to prevent further changes]. I’m not sure that there is a treatment we want to do,” Foulke says. “[Warhol] accepted this as change. And I can accept damage to some extent, but I don’t want the painting to—to use his words—melt away before our eyes.” 

Funding for the conservation of this artwork was generously provided through a grant from the Bank of America Art Conservation Project.  

The post Living Artwork appeared first on Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.

 “In late 1898, Andrew Carnegie was reading a newspaper, and he saw an article about a giant dinosaur having just been discovered in Wyoming,” says Lamanna. “And he got really excited because he had just founded what would become Carnegie Museum of Natural History in 1895, and he was looking for a showstopper.”

 Whole books have been written about what happened after Carnegie read that newspaper, but the abridged version is that he decided to use his vast resources to excavate the beast behind the headlines. Almost immediately, the expedition he financed ran into a problem.

 “Pretty soon it became clear that the only preserved piece of the newspaper dino was a single chunk of thigh bone about the size of a beer keg,” says Lamanna.

 One partial thigh bone does not a showstopper make.

 “Can you imagine,” ponders Lamanna, “those guys triumphantly returning to Pittsburgh to tell one of the richest men in the world, ‘Hey, we spent all that money   you gave us, and brought you back a chunk of thigh’?”

 Fortunately, one of Carnegie’s hired fossil hunters, Bill Reed, knew his stuff and ultimately guided the expedition to another place in southeastern Wyoming known as Sheep Creek. In early July 1899, the crew stumbled upon a massive, nearly complete sauropod (long-necked, plant-eating dinosaur) skeleton. 

“Around 150 million years ago, sauropods lived on every continent except possibly Antarctica. They ranged in weight from that of a horse all the way up to a sperm whale,” says Lamanna. “They were the largest plant-eating animals in a lot of the environments that they existed in.

 “In other words, [the team] had effectively found exactly what Andrew Carnegie was looking for.”

 The crew then spent the rest of the summer carefully extracting sauropod fossils and sending them back to Pittsburgh, where more experts busily cleaned rock off the bones and prepared them for display. What’s even better is that the following summer, another Carnegie expedition returned to the same site and turned up yet another sauropod right next to the first.

This was huge for two reasons.

First, it allowed the scientists to compare the overlapping bones of the two skeletons and determine that they were mostly identical, which means the specimens belonged to the same, as-of-yet-undiscovered species. Second, having two partial skeletons allowed them to create a single composite mount that was nearly 100 percent complete—something that is basically unheard of for an animal roughly the size of three African elephants put together.

 In 1901, the museum’s paleontologist, John Bell Hatcher, made everything official by publishing a monograph that denoted the first skeleton as the “holotype”—or the specimen used to describe a species for the first time. In the same study, it got its official name.

 “And so Diplodocus carnegii came into being,” says Lamanna.

 For most fossils, this would be the end of the story. But for Diplodocus carnegii, the adventures were just beginning.

The King and D. Carnegii

In October 1902, Andrew Carnegie was spending some time at Skibo Castle in northern Scotland, which he had recently purchased and fully renovated.

 “And then one of these really weird coincidences happens,” says Ilja Nieuwland, author of American Dinosaur Abroad: A Cultural History of Carnegie’s Plaster Diplodocus. “Totally unannounced, the English king, Edward, shows up on Andrew Carnegie’s doorstep.”

Edward’s mother, Queen Victoria, had just died in 1901. And as the new guardian of the realm, King Edward VII set his sights on restoring the royal palaces, which the late queen had allowed to fall into disrepair. “Basically, what Edward wanted was to have a look at Carnegie’s plumbing,” says Nieuwland.

Photo: Graeme Smith

Because Carnegie had just renovated his own castle with all the latest trimmings—electricity, sewers, and indoor plumbing—the king apparently wanted to get some inspiration for his own abodes. Of course, kings aren’t big on advance notice. 

In fact, the visit happened so hastily that in order to play “God Save The King” as the monarch approached—as was customary—Carnegie’s servants had to first haul the organ player out of the middle of his bath, says Nieuwland, who is also a researcher at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

And so it was that Andrew Carnegie was giving King Edward VII a tour of his castle when the latter spied a drawing of a curious-looking skeleton hanging on the wall of the cigar room. Carnegie proceeded to tell the story of his prized namesake, Diplodocus.

“And the king offhandedly said, ‘Oh, yeah, I’d like to have one of those in London, as well,’” says Nieuwland. “And Carnegie then took it upon himself to make sure that he actually did get that dinosaur for King Edward. Because Carnegie was really keen on establishing himself the equal to all these kings and queens and so forth.

“So Carnegie asked William Holland, who was the director of Carnegie Museum of Natural History at the time, whether they could find another dinosaur,” says Nieuwland. “And Holland answered with something akin to, ‘Are you serious?!’”

Not wanting to disappoint his boss, Holland came up with an alternative idea: Why not create a copy of the one they already had?

“As luck would have it, Carnegie Museums was also an art museum, so they employed a lot of Italian plasterers to make copies of statues and columns and that sort of thing,” says Nieuwland.

While the two dinosaurs had been excavated and shipped to Pittsburgh, they had not yet been assembled into one. For starters, the now-historic “Carnegie Institute” building, which opened in 1895 and housed Carnegie’s library as well as the beginnings of his art and natural history museums, was too small to house a dinosaur so large. Not to mention, says Nieuwland, “handling the original fossil required much more care than dealing with a plaster copy, and therefore progress was slower.”

Preparators first assembled that first replica, or cast, of Diplodocus carnegii at the Western Pennsylvania Exposition Society near Pittsburgh’s Point in 1904. This marked the first time a version of D. carnegii would ever go on display.

By 1905, that cast was shipped to England in 36 crates, where it was set up in what is now known as the Natural History Museum in London. And the crowds went wild for it.

“There are photos from the unveiling where there are people shoulder-to-shoulder,” says Lamanna.

Back in Pittsburgh, big things were in the works.

“Multiple sources cite the discovery of Diplodocus carnegii and Carnegie’s desire to display its mounted skeleton as a major driving force behind the construction of an expanded Carnegie Institute building,” says Lamanna.

In 1907, the greatly expanded building debuted with its Halls of Architecture and Sculpture, a spectacular foyer for Carnegie Music Hall, and a section dedicated entirely to fossils known as Dinosaur Hall. Diplodocus carnegii finally had a forever home.

“It was a big deal,” says Tom Rea, author of Bone Wars: The Excavation and Celebrity of Andrew Carnegie’s Dinosaur.

The display of real fossils—not just casts—is what made it momentous, explains Rea.

Before long, word of Carnegie’s Diplodocus spread like wildfire. And everybody wanted a piece.

Dippy’s World Tour

 At the turn of the 20th century, the largest and most respected museums in the world were only just beginning to catch dino-fever.

 “It’s a really amazing time in science when you think about it,” says Rea.

“These were all temples of science,” adds Rea, who is also editor and founder of WyoHistory.org, a project of the Wyoming Historical Society. “These big halls, with high ceilings and dramatic arches, and daylight coming down through the clerestory, and all that stuff that makes these spaces so fun.”

“This is probably the most-seen dinosaur specimen in the history of the planet.”

-Matt Lamanna, paleontologist and dinosaur researcher at Carnegie Museum of Natural History

But most of them had nothing like a Diplodocus. So when requests started to pour in from abroad, Carnegie again seized the moment.

Before long, casts would be sent to some of the largest cities in the world. According to Rea, Berlin erected its Diplodocus cast in March 1908. Paris followed suit that June. The following year, Vienna and Bologna joined the trend, and then St. Petersburg in 1910, La Plata, Argentina, in 1912, Madrid in 1913, and Mexico City in 1930.

For the vast majority of museumgoers of the day, it would be the first dinosaur they’d ever laid eyes upon.

“The cool thing about that is, most of these casts are still on display,” says Lamanna.

“When you think about all the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people that see Diplodocus carnegii casts every year in all these European cities, in Latin [and South] America, and couple that with the fact that these mounts have been on display in many cases for more than a century,” says Lamanna, “this is probably the most-seen dinosaur specimen in the history of the planet.”

The House That Dippy Built

No one is quite sure who first coined “Dippy” as the nickname for Carnegie’s Diplodocus.

“I can tell you that the fossil preparator Arthur Coggeshall used the nickname in three articles he wrote in Carnegie magazine about the discovery and fame of D. carnegii in September, October, and November 1951,” says Rea.

Coggeshall had been connected to the museum for more than half a century at that point. In fact, he was on the original expedition in Wyoming when Dippy was discovered.

Nieuwland adds that Coggeshall’s boss, Holland, referred to the Diplodocus as “Old Dip,” but not Dippy.  

The one thing we do know is that pretty much as soon as the casts of Carnegie’s Diplodocus started stomping around the world, some scientists took issue with how the mount stood. This was due, in part, to a notion of the day that dinosaurs would have stood like modern-day lizards and crocodiles—low to the ground, with tail in tow and legs sprawled widely apart.

But Holland, who started his career as a butterfly expert before doubling as the museum’s paleontologist, contended in 1910 that the legs of Diplodocus held the animal higher off the ground, more like a mammal.

“Ultimately, Holland’s argument was proven correct,” says Lamanna, who cites the subsequent discovery of fossilized sauropod trackways showing that the feet were placed close together as the deciding factor. “And now everyone that knows or cares at all about sauropods reconstructs them with their legs underneath their bodies, like an elephant.”

More changes came over time—and some of them quite recently. Lamanna arrived at the museum in 2004 and at the time, the tail of Diplodocus carnegii still lay upon the ground. Worse still, it nearly touched the feet of a T. rex, a dinosaur that humans are closer to in time than Diplodocus would have been.

“So this was wrong on two levels,” says Lamanna. “First of all, the dinosaur’s tail probably didn’t touch the ground very much, if at all. And secondly, having the tail lap against the ankles of a 66-million-year-old dinosaur … I mean, you might as well have had a caveman riding the T. rex.”

Getting Dippy’s tail off the ground—and away from T. rex—was just one of many changes that went into the creation of the museum’s Dinosaurs in Their Time exhibition, which opened in 2008 in a space triple the size of the original Dinosaur Hall. Among other changes, Lamanna and his colleagues also switched the bones in Dippy’s forelimbs and added vertebrae in its tail, in keeping with the latest research.

Photo: Joshua Franzos

Elsewhere in the exhibition, scientists, artists, and fossil preparators transformed formerly two-dimensional fossils into three-dimensional works of art, including Dryosaurus elderae, Camptosaurus aphanoecetes, and Corythosaurus casuarius. Similarly, real fossil heads of Edmontosaurus regalis and Triceratops prorsus received cast bodies, bringing them to life.

And it’s not just the mounts, says Lamanna. The team has also worked to surround the dinos with plants, rocks, smaller animals, and other facets of the ecosystems they would have once inhabited to create a more immersive visitor experience.

Of the roughly 230 objects now on display in Dinosaurs in Their Time, about 75 percent are real fossils, not casts, making this one of the most impressive paleontological exhibitions on Earth.

Dippy: Teacher And Celebrity

Of course, in paleontology, there will always be questions we can’t answer. For instance, scientists have yet to find a Diplodocus carnegii head, meaning the one sported by Dippy currently is a cast of a skull of the related species Diplodocus longus. And remember, Dippy is already a composite skeleton—meaning it’s made up of multiple specimens.

Lamanna—who has helped discover and name much larger sauropods known as titanosaurs—says that Dippy was the bedrock on which so much future paleontology would be built.

“Diplodocus is one of our first windows into sauropod biology,” he explains. “The appearance, behavior, lifestyle, evolutionary relationships; when we do research on sauropods today, in a lot of ways we’re standing on the shoulders of the people that did research on Diplodocus back in the day, and also Diplodocus itself.”

The museum has also fully embraced Dippy’s celebrity—placing the dino in its logo and stationing a full-bodied gelcoat and fiberglass replica outside on Forbes Avenue. These days, the outdoor Dippy may be the one that gets the most attention, on account of its ever-changing accessories.

 “When it’s football season, it might be wearing a Steelers-colored scarf. And just this week, we put up a scarf to recognize the International Transgender Day of Visibility,” says Gretchen Baker, Daniel G. and Carole L. Kamin Director of Carnegie Museum of Natural History. “It gives us a way to celebrate different holidays or express different kinds of community support, or support for our staff who might identify with those communities.”

“Dippy has always been here, since 1907, and represents, really, the beginning of the museum in a lot of ways.”

–Gretchen Baker, Daniel G. and Carole L. Kamin Director of Carnegie Museum of Natural History

Internationally, Dippy the Diplodocus was so beloved that it appeared in The Adventures of Tintin comic, films such as Paddington and Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, and, according to Lamanna, there’s even a good case to be made that
its vertebrae inspired the gigantic sand-monster skeleton seen in the background of the first Star Wars film, A New Hope.

The United Kingdom so cherished its cast that it disassembled Dippy and stored it in the basement to protect it from bombing during World War II. And when the decision was ultimately made to replace the dinosaur in the Natural History Museum’s main hall with a blue whale skeleton in 2017, the cast went on a two-year tour of the British Isles that “smashed visitor records” and raised millions of dollars for local communities due to what they called the “Dippy effect.”

“Dippy has always been here, since 1907, and represents, really, the beginning of the museum in a lot of ways,” says Baker. “It was acquired at a time when there was this kind of mad rush to collect dinosaurs and understand this incredible time in Earth’s history. And we finally had some of the science to do that.”

Diplodocus carnegii is a symbol of “scientific discovery and scientific goodwill,” adds Baker.

Dippy has meant so much to so many. And the chain of events that had to unfold for that legacy to form is nothing short of extraordinary.

Might another institution have found Dippy if Carnegie’s crew hadn’t? Perhaps, says Lamanna, but …

“It seems very doubtful to me that any other institution would have then molded the entire composite skeleton and distributed the resulting replicas to 10 or so prominent museums throughout Europe and Latin America,” he says. “For one thing, that required financial support that very few, if any, other institutions had at the time, or even today.”

Not to mention Carnegie’s chance meeting with the king of England.

“I highly doubt that many other natural history museum founders were hosting powerful monarchs at their personal residences in 1902,” Lamanna says.

Support the museum’s paleontology research with a gift.

The post The Dinosaur that Changed the World appeared first on Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.

The roughly 8-foot-by-12-foot abstract canvas, Noah’s Third Day by the painter Mark Bradford, wasn’t on the itinerary for their prearranged tour. Yet when Eliot Kennedy, the docent leading their tour, noticed the group’s reaction to the work, she felt the need to make space for a conversation.

“One member of the group had such a strong pull and response,” Kennedy says. “After providing some information about the artist having been bullied as a child, and how teachers kept telling him he should be a basketball player because of his height, our visitor connected and understood by looking at how this artist had been through a lot and was showing us small parts of himself.

“It was one of those wonderful moments I treasure—the smile and excitement when talking about this artwork.”

Photo: John Schisler

The curious guest, Assef Hossaini, was touring with his wife, Zainab, and their two sons (ages 9 and 7). Later Hossaini explained what attracted him to Bradford’s abstract artwork—that its meaning varies drastically for each viewer. “Everyone can interpret this one,” he says. “It’s not very clear. Everybody has their own impression. … Find your flavor.”

The families’ visit to the Museum of Art this particular day wasn’t random; they had been invited as part of the Neighborhood Museum program. Launched in February 2023, it’s designed to introduce the museum as a neighborhood resource for recently arrived refugee families through artwork, artmaking, connection, and community. 

Working with eight partner organizations that support refugees in their resettlement process, the museum hosts new families for an orientation in their home language every other Saturday. Families also receive a complimentary annual family membership for up to six people for all four Carnegie Museums, marking what hopefully becomes a long-standing relationship.

Photo: John Schisler

During that first visit, a docent and language interpreter accompany families on a dialogue-based tour of the museum and its resources. It offers a lay of the land, the opportunity to view and discuss selected pieces of art, and an artmaking workshop facilitated by museum educators to provide a form of expression for the experiences that each participant brings with them. The rest of the itinerary can fluctuate, based on the interests of that day’s group. Last year, the program gifted memberships to 69 refugee families, totaling more than 400 people who speak at least eight languages.

Kennedy loves how this program offers the families a place to simply relax and be together—“enjoying a break from all the hard decisions and realities they face as refugees and as newcomers to a city.”

“Pittsburgh is a refugee-welcoming city,” Kennedy exclaims. “And as part of Pittsburgh, I think the museum is providing that welcoming environment.”

Connections Beyond Art

Blaine Siegel, Carnegie Museum of Art’s public programs manager, dreamt up the program after a stint as the artist-in-residence at Pittsburgh International Airport five years ago. Late one night, he watched an immigration case worker greet a refugee family who’d just arrived after a long journey. Siegel began asking: What can I do in my world to make this experience better for refugees? This inclusive Carnegie Museums program aims to answer that question while working toward larger goals of being a multicultural institution.

Participating families join through the Museum of Art’s partnership with refugee resettlement and support agencies like Bethany Christian Services, JFCS (Jewish Family and Community Services), AJAPO (Acculturation for Justice, Access, and Peace Outreach), Hello Neighbor, Latino Community Center, Catholic Charities of Pittsburgh, and Casa San Jose.

Many of the families come from conflict regions—Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ukraine, Colombia, and El Salvador. Interpreters accompany the groups during their visit; in December, two stuck close to help to translate between English, Pashto, and Farsi.

Photo: John Schisler

As families filed inside for the December visit, possessing varying degrees of English language fluency, Siegel greeted them with friendly banter and a brief overview of the day ahead, helping put everyone at ease. The kids, donning puffy winter coats and sturdy winter boots, wore timid smiles, and one pigtailed participant held her dad’s hand tightly as she tucked herself into his shadow.

Siegel reassured them that they had entered a space that is for each of them. “We used to say, ‘People need the museum,’” he explained, pausing to let the interpreters echo his thoughts in real time. “Now we say, ‘The museum needs people,’ and that means all people. You belong in all the museums and everywhere in this city.”

Siegel then introduced Kennedy, the docent, who spoke in expressive and easily digestible sentences as they began their tour, ascending the Grand Staircase toward the Hall of Sculpture. “I am very happy that you’re here so this can be part of your Pittsburgh,” she tells the families. “Now you can come here to start new memories with your family and friends.”

The start of Kennedy’s tour was as much a history of their newly adopted home as it was an investigation of art. Moving into the room labeled “A Pittsburgh Anthology,” Kennedy touched on the city’s industrial past and how it remains an important memory in the cultural fabric, prompting curious questions about whether steel production continues here to this day.

The group then strolled between works ranging from modern sculpture to Impressionist classics such as Claude Monet’s Water Lilies (Nymphéas) and Waterloo Bridge, London. Kennedy encouraged everyone to share their reactions to the art, especially the younger onlookers.

Photo: John Schisler

“When you think of all the hardships and challenges these families are facing,” Kennedy says, “to be able to provide a space where we can look at art and share these deep conversations is an honor. I like the word ‘healing’ in the sense of being able to have a moment of feeling safe and connecting with your environment.”

And as someone who always makes a point to visit museums in a new city, Siegel believes that the Museum of Art can serve as an important community resource and hub. “It helps you understand the local culture,” he says. But perhaps, above all, this program allows families to connect with other refugees and Pittsburgh residents, at what might be a very isolating and disorienting time.

A Sense of Belonging

After the morning tour, several Afghan attendees shared their personal stories—of harrowing escapes from Taliban rule and entire lives left behind. They touched on the heartache of leaving homes and possessions and careers and people they love, carrying only what they could manage on their backs.

“Every Afghan family has a similar story,” notes Yama Azizi, an interpreter with Global Wordsmiths, a Pittsburgh-based language interpreter program that works with Neighborhood Museum. “It’s like this for all.”

Assef Hossaini, the visitor drawn to the Mark Bradford painting, pointed out that his brother was also in attendance with his wife and two sons. Hossaini’s family is from Kabul, and they left home after the Taliban took over in 2021, arriving in Pittsburgh last July. The brothers and their families followed their other brother, Massoud Hossaini, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer who’d begun working for the Tribune-Review newspaper. There also seemed to be job opportunities here, Hossaini says, and the resettlement agencies weren’t entirely full, like they are in some other cities.

Photo: John Schisler

Since these families bring with them myriad experiences, all program docents and educators are required to participate in a cultural sensitivity training.

Presented by Caley Donovan, the refugee resettlement site supervisor at Bethany Christian Services, the training first details the process refugees go through, from pre-screening and travel to arrival in their new home—with further discussion of the trauma faced by many. Next, Mary Jayne McCullough, director of Global Wordsmiths, offers a “working with an interpreter 101” crash course.

“Everyone is so excited to help, which is wonderful,” Donovan says, “but we want to make sure that they don’t accidentally retraumatize the families they are working with. My training gives them some background, some basic cultural awareness, and some basic tips and strategies to create positive interactions. We also teach them how to work with an interpreter, which is definitely an acquired skill.”

For Hossaini, spending time in a cultural venue like this is a familiar experience.

“I like museums,” Hossaini says, sharing that he used to frequent the art museum in Kabul with his family and orphans he worked with in a former humanitarian role. “It’s a very good benefit for me and my family,” especially during cold winter months.

Photo: John Schisler

Assef’s wife, Zainab, thinks this “fresh info” is good for her kids’ minds, and viewing these exhibitions encourages them to talk with one another, too. “It’s really useful for the new generation,” she says. Their family spent the previous weekend at Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

Of the art her family viewed during their facilitated tour, she notes that “some art was very beautiful” and calls out the painting Farallon Island, 1887. She hopes to learn more about its artist, Albert Bierstadt.

Assef and Zainab’s 9-year-old son, Elyas, personally prefers to draw with crayons, but says he still enjoys “the big art.” Elyas’s cousin Yousef (also 9) talked about his favorite work of the morning—untitled: upturned house by Phyllida Barlow, a nearly 12-foot-high boxy sculpture of multicolored panels balanced on stacked shipping pallets. “I think it is so amazing,” Elyas remarks, adding that he also loves the main Oakland building and can’t wait to return.

As for his overall impression of the museum, he says: “I don’t want to go home.”

“I love having that opportunity to personally welcome our groups; it just makes me so happy,” Kennedy exclaims. “And this is a two-way relationship; we benefit hugely as an institution—and personally—by welcoming people of different cultures and perspectives to our museums.”

Donovan adds: “My biggest hope is that these families will come away from Neighborhood Museum with the understanding that they are a part of our Pittsburgh community, and that the museums—and all our city has to offer—are for them too.”

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