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| - If you're not into blockbusters and the crowds that attend them, you might really enjoy spending a slow, quiet day with the impressionist and modern paintings in the art museum's permanent collection.
When I moved to Pittsburgh, they had this sort of omnibus exhibit of their own permanent collection called (somewhat inappropriately) Panopticon and arranged kind of Barnes Collection style. That was cool. But on subsequent visits, the permanent galleries were equally impressive and even more pleasurable in their everyday arrangements.
I might be mistaken, but I think that even everyday the paintings are hung above one another, not all in a straight line in a white box of a room, ala the Metropolitan's modern collection.
I also think the furniture collection is pretty exciting and the Teenie Harris Collection and Project is fascinating.
I will say, though, that in six years I was never once moved to go to any of the special exhibitions they hosted.
I guess it's important to note, too, that the art and natural history museums are attached to one another (and located in Oakland), and one admission covers both. The fossilized dinosaur skeletons at the natural history museum are supposed to be amazing, but I OD-ed on dinosaurs somewhere around the second grade. Still, the whole Victorian super-museum thing is an experience.
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