Professor Strazdes on Andrew Carnegie’s museum of evolution

Carnegie Institute, established in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania during the great age of museum building in the United States, took shape between 1895 and 1907. Financed solely by Andrew Carnegie, it stood as an oddity in having no founder’s collection leading some to interpret Carnegie’s role as that of a silent financial partner who turned over creative control to others. Professor Diana Strazdes argues in her article “Andrew Carnegie’s Museum of Evolution” that from the start, Carnegie Institute’s natural history collection and art gallery were ideologically driven to accord with their
founder’s idiosyncratic values. Carnegie Institute symbolized the thinking of philosopher Herbert Spencer and educational reformer Matthew Arnold, as absorbed and interpreted by Carnegie. The collections of palaeontology, casts, reproductions, paintings and drawings were displayed to reflect both Spencer’s concept of evolution and Arnold’s concept of anti-materialism.

“Andrew Carnegie’s Museum of Evolution” is published in Journal of the History of Collections, vol. 36 no. 1 (2024) pp. 135–148.