Friday, June 09, 2006

Erie Art Museum drive and Chabon filming in Pittsburgh

Michael Chabon's Mysteries of Pittsburgh will indeed film in Pittsburgh As an interesting side note - Mysteries was Chabon's first novel to feature the theoretically straight guy saved from himself by having a gay experience (a la Wonder Boys)

The Erie Art Museum announced its $9 million "Picture a Place"capital campaign Thursday, the single largest funding drive in the organization's history. Erieblogs.com is pretty darn bullish on the idea, but the prettiest, biggest empty building is still an empty building and I've never been to the Museum on a day where there were more than three other people (excepting school groups).

Don't forget that world e-book fair is coming up!

Just get the name right. Weegee the Famous.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Aside from school groups, I've rarely seen a full house at the Cleveland Museum either and they are the 25th largest market in America.

American's just don't focus on the arts.

Anonymous said...

Aside from school groups, I've rarely seen a full house at the Cleveland Museum either and its in one of the largest metro areas in America with one of the best Museums in the world (or so says my Art History prof).

American's just don't focus on the arts, period.

Dittman said...

You know, you're right. Cleveland is one of my favorite museums and it is almost always near empty (aside from the evening concerts) and it's one of my favorites to go to simply because of that reason. Likewise, the I S Gardner where I'm headed next week is also constantly empty.

So that then makes me think that endowments keep these places open. The Cleveland Museum of Art has a Standard and Poor’s “AAA” long-term rating, an “A-1+” short-term rating and an endowment level of approximately $700 million, the highest among any art museum in the United States. The Gardner much smaller with a $75 million endowment. I can't find any endowment figures for the Erie Art Museum. Can anyone help?