The Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History in Pittsburgh are joining more than 100 museums in the U.S., Canada and Mexico Thursday to celebrate "Art Museum Day."
The annual event is sponsored by the Association of Art Museum Directors and features reduced or free admission along with special events and programming.
Carnegie Museums' spokesman Jonathan Gaugler said admission will be free from 3:30 to 8:00 PM. This complements the "Free Thursdays" they tried in February and March.
"Every week you can see it building and building, so maybe on the first free Thursday evening, it was a typical Thursday evening attendance," Gaugler said. "By those last few Thursdays, we were getting thousands of people, you know. I think the last one was over 2,000 people attending."
He said this is a good opportunity for parents to bring their children to the museums after school.
Gaugler said the focus is not so much on the free admission but rather the role of the museums.
"Art Museum Day is a way for art museums to remind people that we're a resource for them, we're here for them, and to welcome people just one more day of the year," Gaugler said.
The special event will also include the monthly happy hour, Culture Club, which will feature a screening of "History" from the PBS series, Art21, plus a discussion of a work by Glenn Ligon, one of the featured artists in that episode. Admission to the event typically costs $10.
