Andrew Carnegie's museums in Oakland went through their first major expansion in 1907, adding a dinosaur hall, a grand central staircase and the marble-columned foyer for his music hall. A hundred years later, the crown jewels of Pittsburgh's arts and cultural scene are going through another major renewal phase.

Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh is currently hosting one headline-grabbing show, "Bodies," at its North Side science center while girding for two major exhibitions at its Oakland home: the reopening of its world-class dinosaur collection Nov. 21 and the Carnegie International contemporary art show in May.

The museums have invested $60 million in capital improvements during the past five years, topped off by the $36 million expansion of the dinosaur hall in a former outdoor atrium. That improvement project is the biggest in the system's history, costing more than the entire construction of Carnegie Science Center in 1991.

The science complex is due for its own major overhaul starting next year, with planning under way for new facilities dedicated to environmental, robot and sports studies.

"I can't recall, in my tenure or in my memory, when so many things have come together in such a relatively short window, and that sort of put us front and center on so many stages," Carnegie Museums president David Hillenbrand said last week.

Many of the changes are driven by the museum system's $150 million capital campaign: Launched in 2002, it is expected to wrap up by the end of this year, ahead of its goal.

Since 2003, that capital giving, plus gifts from private foundations, helped fund construction of the Scaife Galleries at the Museum of Art, the Buhl Digital Dome at the science center and work at Hillman Hall, Simmons Gallery, Powdermill Nature Reserve and new classrooms at the Museum of Natural History, in addition to the new dinosaur wing.

Dollars and sense

Structural changes at the museums coincide with budget-tightening instituted by Mr. Hillenbrand, a former Bayer executive, since his hiring in mid-2005. The four Carnegie Museums had balanced their $55 million annual operating budgets by dipping into its endowment funds multiple times -- once at the industry-standard 5.5 percent of endowment and again in a secondary draw.

In his first budget, Mr. Hillenbrand cut that second draw in half and then in half again this year. The 2008 budget he will take to Carnegie trustees in December will eliminate the annual practice -- the museums will only be able to use extra endowment funds for long-term, strategic initiatives.

"There couldn't be better news. Not too many years ago, we were taking significant secondary draws to balance the budget," said board of trustees chair Suzy Broadhurst. "When we brought David in, he inspired all four museums to think differently."

Each of the four museums will also have to file five-year budget and strategic plans starting next year, as part of the climate change the museums' president is trying to trigger.

"We have an obligation to be successful stewards of our assets, just like a corporation is to its shareholders," said Jo Haas, science center director. "I believe it's essential that we need to be savvy about resource allocation and probably have more of a challenge than a business does in making a case for its activities."

At The Andy Warhol Museum, officials have embraced some of the long-term planning -- they're pondering a show pairing Warhol and Picasso -- but worry the business talk can get in the way of freshness and quick turnaround in arts programming.

"Anytime you have to look forward to see what you can try to do it's always beneficial," Warhol director Tom Sokolowski said. "Though I think sometimes people in business have a peculiar way of thinking it's an easy thing to do in a nonprofit. I don't agree with that."

Changes within the Carnegie system come with other risks. The science center booked "Bodies" -- a privately produced exhibition of full-body human corpses -- over complaints from human rights activists that the corpses could be those of Chinese political prisoners. But the show has been a success, with more than 20,000 visitors in two weeks, and was approved by a museum-appointed ethics advisory panel.

The show "has been to every major city in America," said Mr. Hillenbrand, who pushed for the science center to book "Bodies" after seeing it in Toronto. "Do you bring something important to your community, so they can see it too, or do you capitulate to the respected views of people who may disagree with you?"

Admission hike

In August, officials announced that admission to the Oakland art and natural history museums would jump $5 for the Nov. 21 opening of Dinosaurs in Their Time, making ticket prices $15 for adults and $11 for children. The children's prices will be higher than those at natural history museums in New York, Chicago and Philadelphia.

Mr. Hillenbrand said visitors will get "a one-two knockout punch" of two museums for that cost and the museums expect a 40 percent attendance increase next year, despite the increase.

"We have on our Museum of Natural History board many, many board members who are businessmen, and they all said the business model is quite clear on this. There was not a hue and cry at all about raising prices," he said.

Not all prices are going up: To combat a 10 percent dip in attendance at the 2004-05 Carnegie International, the art museum has dropped the $2 ticket surcharge it added three years ago as well as moving the show up to May (from the traditional fall start) to capture the cultural tourist market.

Attendance across the museums generally has also dipped the past five years, but officials attribute that to closures of dinosaur hall and the Scaife Galleries for renovations during the period and nationwide museum attendance fallout from Sept. 11 attacks.

Attendance is up 2 percent year-to-date in 2007, and officials expect even bigger increases when numbers for "Bodies," the dinosaur hall and the International are factored. Attendance -- and worldwide attention -- for the Warhol museum are growing every year.

Focus on science

With one major building project all but finished at the dinosaur hall, attention at Carnegie Museums goes next to the science center.

The center has completed a 2006-2012 strategic plan that focuses on six initiatives: astronomy; robots, sports and the body; rivers and the environment; forces, matter and motion; and scientific curiousity.

On the horizon, the science center plans to build another sports facility next fall to replace the UPMC SportsWorks building taken over by the Port Authority for use as a Light Rail Transit station. Also, riverfront facilities are planned for a new wing called the Eco.Experience, a project focusing on environmental sustainability and the center's -- and the Pittsburgh region's -- proximity to the three rivers.

"We're imagining it to be a fairly large-scale addition of both indoor and outdoor experiences that are all about inspiring people to take better care of the earth," Ms. Haas said. "To us, the rivers and our amazing location at the confluence of the three rivers is a practical way of doing that."

Last week the Heinz Endowments awarded the science center $100,000 for architectural designs for the eco project, following up on a previous $250,000 grant. The wing will be built on what is now a parking lot west of the center.

Also in the works is a collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University on robot exhibitions and other programming, including a 6,000-square-foot-plus robot space to be built on the center's second floor next year.

No timetable is set for all the facilities at the new science center, Mr. Hillenbrand said, but once finished, "it will be a unique experience, not only in Pittsburgh. Like all of these [capital projects], you hope they will become nationally important and a first-day attraction for the city."