Fort Pitt Museum to take advantage of slow January to close, clean Pittsburgh diorama
Share this post:
The Fort Pitt Museum in Point State Park will temporary close for the month of January for annual exhibition maintenance and updates.
Brady Smith, director of marketing and communications for the Senator John H. Heinz History Center, said the museum has closed for maintenance every January for the past seven years. January is typically a slower month, he said. The museum tends to get more visitors in warmer months, when more people are walking through Point State Park.
“We find that it is a great time to do the much-needed cleaning and maintenance and care of all the historical artifacts in the building,” Smith said. “It’s time to add artifacts and new displays that we might not have had the chance to do otherwise throughout the year.”
Curators will clean the museum’s 50-year-old diorama of 18th-century Pittsburgh and add several new 18th-century powder horns to the second floor exhibition, according to a news release.
The staff also will use the time to create a full 2020 event schedule, including living history demonstrations, special guest speakers and a daylong women’s history seminar in July.
The diorama is one of the museum’s most popular exhibits, Smith said. Curators use the month of January to clean the piece, using toothbrushes and curatorial cleaning tools to scrutinize every nook of the display.
“It’s amazing to see the staff at the Fort Pitt Museum clean and update the diorama, because they take such great care of it,” he said.
When it reopens Feb. 1, the museum’s featured exhibition will be Pittsburgh, Virginia, which explores how the city nearly became part of Virginia.
The museum attracted more than 55,000 visitors in 2018, according to a news release.