Introduction
The Carnegie Museum of Art (CMOA) was established in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on November 5th, 1895, by Andrew Carnegie, a leading philanthropist and industrialist in the United States and Britain. After decades of accumulating wealth through various investments and major sales, Carnegie spent the last twenty years of his life making hefty donations to public projects that would lead to education and social advancement — the CMOA is one such project. One can trace back to Carnegie’s original intent for such an institution, as he wished for the CMOA to be “a record of the progress and development of pictorial art in America” (Holland 1901). In this project, we thus seek to examine its photographic archive, containing literal representations of life in photographic form, to investigate the motivations of the CMOA. Through our analysis, we have determined that it truly does strive to educate the public and improve society by keeping a proper record of art in America. In particular, it is apparent from the photography titles that the CMOA strives to document historical events in the city of Pittsburgh; in recent decades, it has expanded its collection’s subject content to encapsulate events in America and other countries as well through international photographers. Furthermore, the sources of the photographs reveal that many are donated by art docents and relatives of photographers who likely had keen interests in giving the public access to these photographs in the spirit of art and education. Our dataset comes from the CMOA itself, provided as an open source repository on GitHub where curious developers can further investigate the composition of the CMOA photography collection. The dataset contains information such as the titles, sources of photographs, creation date, photographer information, and more. A combination of analyses with these data types will thus serve to illuminate the CMOA’s overarching intentions.
Place in Literature
While there are few sources in literature that directly relate to the CMOA, the CMOA is depicted as an impactful institution through the description of its triennial flagship Carnegie International exhibit (Micucci 2008). Micucci cites the various exhibitions—films, sculptures, contemporary art—and their impact as evidence for the far-reaching and time-traversing influence of such art exhibitions as the CMOA itself.
In general, institutions in Pittsburgh have a system of curation that is highly selective, considering its rich history during the Industrial Revolution (Carrier 2019). Therefore, the CMOA plays an important role in showcasing this history and selecting which pieces get to define these events. Photography is an especially important tool that allows us to investigate the impact of the CMOA. In the history of photography in the United States, photography has been utilized in a straightforward documentation style that is able to capture historical events (Blank 1994). In addition, photographs are useful in that they are a static presentation of societies and the implicit dynamism hidden within them (Ferrarotti 1993).
In investigating the CMOA photography archive, we must also consider what literature indicates about making interpretations from photographs, as photographs may not always be an adequate representation of art and trends in America. Photography provides a subjective perspective towards events in history because they are inherently selected by the photographer, so we must be careful in interpreting the images though they may seem objective (Brumfield 2020). Even though world events may be negative in tone, photographers have the ability to capture positive images, thereby injecting their own perspective into the photographs (Little 2009). Furthermore, when paired with context that is provided by institutions, photographs may become political in nature and will be interpreted differently by different people (Edkins 2013). Photographs do not contain textual information and can thus lead to uncertain interpretation of historical events (Keilbach 2009).
Furthermore, in order to truly consider the photograph as a historical source, one must investigate who took the photograph, who the photograph is addressed for, how the photograph was circulated, and the effects of its dispersal (Tucker 2009). Photographs are deeply connected with societal aspects as they seek to capture them through images, and the social climate and the origins of the work gives insight into the photograph itself (Helbig 2016). It is also important to investigate the backgrounds of the photographers as they provide insight into the social and historical impact of the photographs (Finley 2011).
Keeping these issues in mind, we must tread carefully when we investigate the themes shown in the photography collection and place them into broader historical contexts.
Significance
This project is significant because it allows us to go beyond taking the motivations of the CMOA at face value and instead tries to understand them through the collection content itself. By exploring the potential trends in the data, we can learn more about the significance of the CMOA in its role in the broader function of museums in America, and how photography specifically plays a part in its significance. Through the investigation of these issues, we can come to a better understanding of the critical role that museums play in preserving history and showcasing the world around us.
