Pittsburgh – Julie M. L. Mitchell

My middle daughter and I road-tripped to Pittsburgh this past weekend! She had a hockey tournament and I’d been dying to go back to see more of the city (I’ve only ever been there once before). At the top of my list was visiting the Andy Warhol museum, which fit into our schedule beautifully on Saturday morning.

Somebody kindly tipped me off that we have to buy tickets ahead of time, which I did minutes before somebody else kindly tipped me off that the Warhol Museum is not kid-appropriate. Oops. I told Adrienne she may have to go through the museum scary movie-style, with her hands over her face, fingers cracked. It turned out to be a non-issue. I think there were two things that were “gross” for a seventh-grade girl, but nothing she couldn’t handle. We moved swiftly past, both of us pretending we didn’t see anything unusual.

We bought the earliest tickets available (10am), which was perfect because we pretty much had the place to ourselves. For eight bucks we parked in a small, but almost empty lot across the street. There was no time limit, which was great because we spent the whole day downtown. The staff was lovely at the museum, but be prepared to put your purse in a locker and mask up. They were very, very strict about masks. They even tied back the curtain to the photo booth, so they could be sure people left their masks on in there. (Adrienne and her friends pulled theirs down and were immediately scolded. Definitely skip the photo booth.)

The art though! The Warhol Museum is seven floors of chronological art, starting with Andy’s early work (aka, my least favorite stuff) on the 7th level. Everyone knows Andy for his soup cans and his Marilyn Monroes, but he is an artist of many, many mediums! In addition to screen printing, Andy worked in painting, sculpture, photography… even taxidermy! And he was an avid collector of tons of things. Teeth molds, for instance (something I wish I had known when I wrote this post!) and correspondance (all of which he put in various time capsules.)

This drawer was his teeth mold collection, another drawer had shoes, another had something else I can’t remember, and so on and so on!

I was there with three middle school hockey players and their dads, and we all found things we loved in the ecclectic exhibit. The girls loved Warhol’s interactive exhibit, Silver Clouds. It was so kid-friendly, I assumed it wasn’t a real Warhol, but it was! It debuted in 1966. The “clouds” are filled with regular air and helium. They float softly around the room waiting to be caught or pushed or poked. How fun is that?

The girls’ other favorites were the elephant (note the little people- I just thought it was a random pattern until the twelve-year-olds pointed them out to me!), the taxidermy lion (not pictured, please see stuffed Great Dane instead), and randomly, an adorable dauchsaund.