It drew 83,000 people to the Carnegie, making it the museum's third-highest attended show in the last 10 years. But it didn't do as well as anticipated. Since the two Midwestern shows, the Carnegie has not considered doing more collaborative exhibitions with regional museums. Armstrong says he'd be open to staging another one, but only if it centered on a valuable theme that was not too general or inconsequential. Pittsburgh's geography also keeps the Carnegie off the blockbuster circuit.
Big cities are also better known to outsiders.
An art lover considering a blockbuster-based excursion to Boston might know she can see Faneuil Hall and the JFK Library in addition to a show at the Museum of Fine Arts, but might not know what she could see in Pittsburgh in addition to a show at the Carnegie. That's where the Greater Pittsburgh Convention and Visitors Bureau comes in. Brown, who is vice president of the organization, says the cultural tourism program in the works at the bureau will enable Carnegie shows to be marketed to tourists. That could increase attendance and convince blockbuster planners that people would, indeed, come to Pittsburgh for a big art show. Museums like the Art Institute of Chicago that can pull in a million people, it's hard to compete with that.