CLEVELAND -- A big, blockbuster show takes up the entire back cover of the Carnegie Museums' magazine this spring -- but the show is in Cleveland, not Pittsburgh.

		Related article Next up: 'Baseball as America'

The Cleveland Museum of Art is hosting "Monet in Normandy," a giant show that sold out at previous runs in San Francisco and Raleigh, N.C. Another massive Cleveland exhibit, "Diana: A Celebration," is nearby.

So why are Cleveland museums putting on these blockbuster shows -- and marketing them to Pittsburgh art and culture lovers -- while their Pittsburgh counterparts seem to be sitting on their hands? The answer is complicated, but has to do with differences in strategy, museum types and timing.

First off, Pittsburgh does put on big shows -- the Carnegie Science Center has one coming up in October called "Bodies," and the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens has one in May on glass artist Dale Chihuly. Crowds for the latter exhibit are expected to be so big that Phipps is looking to share the Carnegie's parking lots in Oakland.

The Carnegie Museum of Art also does major shows, though not of the same blockbuster type as Cleveland's 50-work look at Impressionist master Claude Monet.

The Cleveland Museum of Art has both a bigger collection and endowment than the Carnegie's. That gives it more resources to trade with other museums while borrowing their Monet works, and more funds to curate, market, insure and catalog them. (Putting together catalogs for such major shows can cost about $200,000 and marketing another $500,000 per museum, estimated Carnegie Museum of Art Director Richard Armstrong. A Cleveland museum official would not comment on costs.)

While Cleveland worked with two other museums on the touring Monet show, the Carnegie tends to curate its own, most notably in the Carnegie International contemporary art shows, the next one coming next year. It built last year's "Fierce Friends" with Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum -- also using artifacts from the Carnegie's Museum of Natural History -- as well as 2001's "Light" exhibition.

The Carnegie also alters what major touring shows it does host, such as last year's "Louis Comfort Tiffany" exhibition, which toured such cities as Dallas, Seattle and Toledo, Ohio, Mr. Armstrong said. It added educational elements, ancient glass from the Natural History museum and guides to Tiffany glass in area buildings.

"We tend to exploit our own staff principally [in designing exhibitions] -- even in the case of the Tiffany show we basically reformed the exhibition," he said. "Our way of doing things is really quite ambitious."

The Cleveland Museum of Art is in the midst of a major $258 million expansion project through 2011, so more than four years ago it began lining up major shows such as "Monet" and another on Barcelona art, coordinated with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, partly to keep attendance up during construction.

The Carnegie Natural History museum did something similar in 2005, importing "The Mysterious Bog People" show to its Richard P. Simmons gallery, to offset attendance losses during the ongoing $36 million construction of its new dinosaur hall -- which itself will probably be marketed to eastern Ohio when it opens late this year.

Museums tend to do some soul-searching when paying for large shows, especially those curated by for-profit promotional companies, such as the "Diana" show in Cleveland and the upcoming "Bodies" exhibit at the Science Center.

Cleveland's Convention and Visitors Bureau was pushing for a local site for the popular "Diana" show after a planned date in Shanghai fell through, and Western Reserve Historical Center officials -- with the help of local sponsors -- agreed to host it.

Some may question whether it is an "exact match" for the center's historical mission, its marketing director Rita Kueber said. But the center does have its own costume collection and emphasizes local genealogy, she noted, and the "Diana" show is full of the late princess's gowns, and her great-great-grandmother was from Ohio.

At the Carnegie Science Center, the "Bodies" exhibit -- which includes preserved human bodies often in active, athletic poses -- is hoped to boost the center's educational mission, and be a good fit for its UPMC SportsWorks building.

Like any big show, it is also hoped to be a money-maker -- the Science Center plans to charge an extra fee for entering the exhibit, as Natural History did for "Bog People." Tickets are currently going for between $24 and $27 at its sites in Las Vegas and New York.

In regard to marketing their events, Cleveland groups commonly advertise in the Pittsburgh area: Cleveland Museum of Art external affairs director Donna Brock calls it "a population we think is very rich in its appreciation of art and education."

Pittsburgh institutions often return the favor, as they did during last year's "Pittsburgh Roars" campaign, which offered half-price museum admissions to Ohio visitors. The promotion attracted 4,425 Cleveland-area visitors, said "Roars" director Marguerite Jarrett Marks.

Ms. Marks is now running the 2007 "Pittsburgh Celebrates Glass" program, which will also advertise Pittsburgh glass events to the Cleveland area.