Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh has finished the biggest capital fund-raising drive in its 113-year history $11 million ahead of its goal.

The four museums raised $161 million in the "Building the Future" campaign, which helped pay for long-term improvements across the museum system, including changes to the natural history museum's dinosaur hall, galleries at the Carnegie Museum of Art, a digital dome at the Carnegie Science Center and educational facilities at the Oakland complex.

The total includes two recent significant gifts: $1.5 million from the Fine Foundation to underwrite The Andy Warhol Museum's first endowed curator position, and $3 million from the Alan and Jane Lehman Foundation to the Carnegie Museum of Art for a curator and art purchases.

That pair of gifts helped push the museums across the finish line of a $150 million capital campaign launched in 2002. Carnegie museums have poured $60 million in long-term improvements into their system over those years, much of it gobbled up by the $36 million expansion of "Dinosaurs in Their Time."

The funds -- raised from multimillion gifts from private foundations down to small "adoptions" of dinosaur bones by local residents -- will also go into the museum system endowment, helping to pay for smaller-scale improvements.

The Carnegie system's endowment stands at roughly $300 million, with $41 million raised during the capital campaign -- $26 million tied to specific projects and $15 million unrestricted.

"We can now wrap up our comprehensive campaign knowing that, through the generosity of 6,900 individuals and organizations, our museums are better positioned than ever to make a difference in the region and the world," said museums President David Hillenbrand.

The biggest gifts during the campaign came from the Hillman Family foundations ($19.2 million); the Heinz Endowments ($16 million); state government ($15 million); and grants of $5 million to $10 million each from the Eden Hall, Fine, Richard King Mellon and R.P. Simmons Family foundations.

Besides the dinosaur hall, the money helped pay for improvements to the Sarah Scaife Galleries at the Museum of Art; the Hillman Hall of Minerals and Wertz galleries at the Museum of Natural History; the environmentally sensitive expansion of Powdermill Nature Reserve, the natural history museum's field station in Westmoreland County; and the Buhl Digital Dome at the science center.

Money is still trickling in, including funds raised from the dinosaur "Adopt-A-Bone" program, which has reached $170,000 through the adoptions of 1,950 bones. Most were in the $25 to $50 range, according to TenUnited, the museum's Web designers for the promotion.

"All in all, it went spectacularly well," Museum of Natural History board Chairman Jack Barbour said about the improvements financed by the campaign's funds. "I couldn't be happier."

Today's news aside, the fund raising never really stops for nonprofit institutions such as the Carnegie: Infrastructure attention goes next to the science center, which is implementing long-term plans to expand its riverside facilities on the North Side.

Though still in the design stages, another capital campaign will eventually follow.