Dear friends,

The museum’s 2023 line up of exhibitions draws vital inspiration from the museum’s extensive collection, positioning it in new, imaginative ways to further engage you, today’s visitors.

Carnegie Museum of Art’s remarkable collection—a living, breathing archive of artists and artworks—embodies our ever-evolving practice of research and artistic engagement at the museum. We are fortunate that our collection represents an abundance of rich and diverse works, allowing us to incubate new ideas and reflect on and actively write its history in the making.  Each exhibition creatively activates different functions of the collection—from research and acquisition to conservation and interpretation—exploring diverse curatorial methodologies that reflect how Carnegie Museum of Art innovates its work in relation to art, artists, and the world.

In May 2023, a retrospective of Joan Brown (American, 1938–1990) examines the San Francisco Bay Area artist’s career from her student days in the 1950s to her premature death in 1990. Organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, this exhibition is the first major museum exhibition and publication of her work in more than 20 years. Carnegie Museum of Art’s iteration of the retrospective contextualizes The Room, Part 1, a major painting by Brown in the museum’s collection, by providing visitors with an expansive survey of this critically important painter’s practice.

Also in May, the museum’s Forum series continues to feature contemporary artists who are engaging with Carnegie Museum of Art’s unique resources as an opportunity for experimentation. The Forum series invites living artists to deepen their relationship to and understanding of the museum and expand their practice through a commission or new presentation of existing works. Forum 86 presents new works by Pittsburgh–based Lyndon Barrois Jr., and Forum 87 presents a commissioned video work by New York–based Amie Siegel, both of whom engage the ways in which museums have historically collected, conserved, and displayed their holdings.

In June, the museum presents Imprinting in Their Time: Japanese Printmakers, 1912–2022. This exhibition features an important, yet rarely seen part of the collection that showcases the continual efforts of a nation and its artists to preserve and advance an artistic tradition long associated with Japan. Also in June, the museum unveils What Brings Us Here?, a reinstallation of the museum’s first gallery in its Scaife collection wing with works from Carnegie Museum of Art’s collection. The reinstallation presents works across disciplines and collection areas in response to a driving question for our visitors. In August, the Heinz Architectural Center presents Unsettling Matter, Gaining Ground, an exhibition that surfaces diverse and unseen collection material and puts that material in front of contemporary ideas about the environment, questioning our collective reliance on fossil fuels.

In November, the year’s final exhibition tells the story of Pittsburgh philanthropists Sheila and Milton Fine, who have been advocates and supporters of the museum for decades. Promised to the museum in 2015, The Milton and Sheila Fine Collection, comprised of significant contemporary artworks from the 1980s to the 2000s, shows as a celebration and remembrance of Milton Fine, who passed away in 2019, and call attention to the legacy of the Fines’ philanthropic impact, as they acquired artworks alongside the museum with the intention of donating their collection. The exhibition presents major paintings and sculptures by Mark Bradford, Jeff Koons, Chris Ofili, Gerhard Richter, Cindy Sherman, Kiki Smith, Christopher Wool, and many others.

My hope is that you have the opportunity to visit the museum this year to behold the powerful momentum of these exhibitions and that they will offer you an experience that is perhaps different from years past. If you aren’t able to come visit us in person, then I invite you to enjoy the program from the comfort of wherever you may be, right here on carnegieart.org.

Yours,

Eric Crosby
Henry J. Heinz II Director, Carnegie Museum of Art
Vice President, Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh