Monday, November 13, 2017
13 unusual little Pittsburgh museums worth getting lost in
www.nextpittsburgh.com: Visitors to Pittsburgh are always steered toward Pittsburgh’s excellent, well-traversed museums named for the city’s giants: Carnegie, Heinz, Warhol.
However, Pittsburgh might also have one of America’s best collections of weird little museums — monuments to obsessive collection, collation and eccentric erudition.
They may not be on your radar, but once you start looking, they seem to be everywhere. It would be impossible to see all of Pittsburgh’s amazing mini-museums in a day or even a weekend, but any itinerary should start with these
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8 comments:
It's always good to find out about interesting spots off campus to explore. I've been getting rather entrenched in my work on campus lately, and articles like this help inspire me to get out and explore the city we have access to here in Pittsburgh. My positive impression of Pittsburgh was actually one of the driving reasons I decided to come here, and this article served as a useful reminder of this initial interest. The idea of visiting smaller museums with niche, off-kilter, or bizarre topics is particularly interesting to me, as I often find inspiration in weird off the beaten track shit. I will definitely make time to check some of these spots out. My schedule is very full, but I believe that exploring the city and being inspired outside of Purnell will improve my art and work inside it.
I loved this article! And it brought up a good point; even as students who have been living in Pittsburgh, it is really easy for us to get stuck only going to the "tourist-y" museums. This list gave me more places to put on my Pittsburgh bucket list! I have always really liked going to museums that are so obviously dedicated to such a particular thing, place, or following. The museums on this list remind me of a museum that I have really like going to back home in Los Angeles called the Museum of Death. It has lots of taxidermy, altars, weird artifacts from creepy murders, and the list of nightmare filled things goes on. While these little Pittsburgh museums might not be as creepy as the Museum of Death, they seem like they would give museum goers the same feeling of being totally submerged in a fully different, unique, and curated world. I cannot wait to visit all of the places on this list!!
I love museums. There are some museums on this list for topics I did not even know there could possibly be enough of to open a museum for. Bicycle Heaven is one such example. A bicycle something I would not have thought of as anything more than a rudimentary form of transportation, and certainly not something note worthy enough for a museum. But I guess you can compile enough information and items, or related items to a topic, to an extent that you could open a museum for anything. The Trundle Manor and the Center for PostNatural History are what spike my interest the most. They are themed around the world of weird – its not necessarily a world of fiction, but its not what we think of as normal either. I love looking through odd ends and trinkets, like the Trundle Manor houses, and I think the world of science-almost-fiction that the Center for PostNatural History holds would provide hours of entertainment (and perhaps even strange inspiration for a Susan project). Like Patrick, I've barely been off campus at all in the past month and a half, and having these places on my radar can give me a cool trip to take while I am here in Pittsburgh over Thanksgiving.
This is one of the reasons I love Pittsburgh. There is so much history in the city and small little oddities like these museums. All freshmen DPs start off the year with Susan Tsu's Scavenger Hunt project, and I have to say it was one of my favorites because it was just about exploring a place around us with art. I think these locations should be added it the list. What looks most appealing to me is the Center for Post Natural History. It looks to highlight and interesting part of societal development. Of course, I think many of us here fall into the trap of campus life and don't make the time to get out and see these kinds of places. Their were a few different times that for a project we went and visited the Carnegie Art Museum, which was really enjoyable, especially as each visit you were looking for something else. However, I would love for these lesser known places to be used too.
I love finding spots around the city that are new and potentially unheard of. While I haven’t been in Pittsburgh long and I have yet to visit some of the more well known museums such as the Mattress Factory or the Warhol Museum, I still think it is really important to go explore smaller, less heard of museums and artistic places as well. There is definitely something to be said in adventuring outside of your comfort zone and finding places that can both expand your view of a city but also expand your view as an artist. There is obviously a large appeal to go see the “traditional” art in the “tourist” museums, but- in such an artistic minded city like Pittsburgh- there is also a huge appeal to find places that are small and have a different, less formal aesthetic to them. I hope to get the opportunity to adventure out to some of these museums in the future!
It’s so easy to get stuck only going to the best trodden museums, or the same couple restaurants, especially as a student with very little free time. It’s really cool to see an article showing all the cool small museums that are around this city. I had no idea we had so many museums to explore. The Bayernhof Museum looks really interesting with all it’s old, eccentric instruments and labyrinth of underground rooms. Also the Center for PostNatural History which seeks to explore and show how humans have changed the world around them to suit their needs. It’s also created by a Carnegie Mellon Professor, which is pretty cool. There are definitely more museums that I would love to check out. One of my favorite things to do with my friends is just explore random stores in whatever town we are, window shopping and finding the weirdest or funniest object, and the way these little museums look like they are set up it would be much the same, but focused more on one topic or another.
I am always on a hunt to find the next place to send my parents when they visit. Having already hit up the major museums and tourist attractions in the city, this article is a godsend for future family drop-ins. While I don’t think my parents will enjoy all the museums on this list (Trundle Manor, while it seems to be right up my alley, is a tad out of my parent’s league), there are certainly a few goldmines to send them galivanting off to. The “Rivers of Steel” museum sounds incredible and a great way to learn a bit more about “The Steel City’s” industrial history. There are other museums on this list that I will certainly have to visit in the future. The Living Dead museum and Pinball PA are at the top of that list (did you know that I grew up in the shadow of the national pinball convention?). It is always great to find new things to do in Pittsburgh.
Museums are a fantastic way to familiarize yourself with a new place because they give a glimpse into the aesthetic that the community supports. It is always good to hear about little off campus places to venture out to over long weekends. It is so easy to get stuck on campus and forget that we are young and in a new city that has so much to offer us in terms of activity, adventure, and entertainment. Personally, I hope to explore Pinball PA. I am a fanatic for little arcade-style games, and I admittedly get quite competitive over them. I am also quite interested in the Center for PostNatural History. It is interesting to hear about the histories of things that we have engineered to fit our needs and why, and this seems like the perfect place to explore that.
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