Pennsylvania - Cultural Destinations
- By Smithsonian.com
- Smithsonian.com, November 06, 2007, Subscribe
An Amish quilt sale in Lancaster County. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Dutch Convention & Visitors Bureau
Pittsburgh’s steel industry made 19th-century industrialist Andrew Carnegie a wealthy man, and the millionaire gave back, endowing the city’s cultural institutions. The Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh include the Museum of Art—which boasts works by Whistler, Monet and Cezanne, among others—as well as the Museum of Natural History and the Andy Warhol Museum, a tribute to a native son.
Another highlight of Pittsburgh’s art scene is the Mattress Factory, a museum dedicated to room-sized installation art, built on-site by artists from across the U.S. The museum is named for its building’s former use—it was a Stearns & Foster mattress factory.
Famous for its appearance in the 1976 movie Rocky, the Philadelphia Museum of Art is one of the largest in the country, with more than 225,000 works of art. Highlights include Van Gogh’s Sunflowers and Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, as well as Asian works dating to the third millennium B.C., an American art collection that contains many works by Philadelphia resident Thomas Eakins, and several installations of historical rooms.
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