Pittsburgh Past—Pittsburgh Present was a program combining museum visits with the opportunity to create rich and versatile classroom projects around two concurrent exhibitions at Carnegie Museum of Art:

Teenie Harris, Photographer: An American Story	Picturing the City: Downtown Pittsburgh, 2007–2010

Through this program, students compared historical images of Pittsburgh’s people, places, and events by legendary photographer Charles “Teenie” Harris and by nine leading photographers documenting our city today. The program was designed to help students explore how photographs characterize a moment in time and can help us shape our vision for the future. Students also discovered photography as a primary source document and investigated how the visual arts can provide a medium to understand and exchange ideas.

Although the Pittsburgh Past—Pittsburgh Present program is now over, if you’re a teacher interested in some of the program’s educational tools, read about our Classroom Extensions. See how you can incorporate some of these concepts as you use some of the photographs from the exhibitions to help your students examine issues of history, identity, and community. All of the photographs from Teenie Harris, Photographer: An American Story are still available for viewing and can easily be incorporated into your classroom discussions. While the complete inventory of photographs from Picturing the City are not yet available online, you can still refer to some of the images here, or even use contemporary photos of the city taken by your own students to complement your lesson plans.

 

Photo credits: Charles “Teenie” Harris, American, 1908–1998; Girl reading comic book in newsstand, c. 1940–1945, black-and-white negative; Heinz Family Fund, 2001.35.3149, Teenie Harris Archive. © 2006 Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. Martha Rial, American, b. 1961; Last Penguins Game at Civic Arena, 2010, inkjet print; Courtesy of the artist