Magnificent Colorado spruces sparkle at Carnegie Trees exhibit's 50th anniversary
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Super Pop! Pow! Bang! tree -
Tracking Nature Bird by Bird tree -
Tracking Nature Bird by Bird tree -
The "Teenie" Harris tree -
The "Teenie" Harris tree -
Green Eggs and Ham tree -
Green Eggs and Ham tree -
The King Midas tree -
The King Midas tree -
'Classic Holiday Treats' Christmas tree -
'Classic Holiday Treats' Christmas tree
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They stand like sentinels in a winter forest, glittering, tall, silent -- except that the forest is a grand hall in Oakland, filled with Greek gods, temples, Gothic and Romanesque facades, and the sentinels are freshly cut 20-foot-plus spruce trees from northwestern Pennsylvania.
The Carnegie Trees display is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, and the current crop in the Carnegie Museum Hall of Architecture -- dubbed "Solid Gold: Classics That Endure" -- is a magnificent display of grandeur, whimsy and history.
Decorated by volunteers and members of the Women's Committee of Carnegie Museum of Art, the tree exhibition began in 1961 as a way to attract more visitors to the museums during the holiday season. It's a gambit that has paid off: On Dec. 10, a free-admission day at the Carnegie Museum, more than 3,600 people came to see the trees.
Technically, there are six of them -- a 12-foot conifer with a "Green Eggs and Ham" theme greets visitors in a hallway -- but the real draw are the five giant trees, ranging in height from 18 to 24 feet, with each requiring a crew of nearly 30 people to haul them indoors.
Volunteer members and friends of the Women's Committee wielded plenty of spray paint, glitter and glue to create the ornaments, which, according to this year's theme, reflect art, culture and science.
There's the "King Midas" tree, gilded from top to toe with golden crowns, flags and flowers, but it could be better described as the "institutional memory" tree because it was decorated by Lowrie Ebbert, 90, and Mernie Berger, 88, sisters and longtime members of the Women's Committee whose mother, Mary Murtland Wertz, helped to begin the tradition. In the late '50s, the sisters, then young mothers, had become members of the committee's Junior Council, which would merge 14 year later with a senior committee to become the Women's Committee, which supports museum acquisitions and outreach programs
"All of our mothers [of Junior Council members] were involved" in setting up the tree exhibition, which was inspired by a visit to St. Louis' art museum in the 1950s," Mrs. Berger said, noting that she and her sister didn't start actively participating until the '70s.
The first trees in 1961 "were little -- 3 or 4 feet tall, all on tables," but artist B.G. Galey, who lived near Ligonier, "had all these gorgeous trees on her property and ended up giving them to us for years" until she and her husband sold the property. "They were 24-foot trees, major, major trees."
They still are -- but now are purchased from Eisler's Nursery, which spends the year scouting for the best trees, said Barbara Granito, chair of this year's display.
One of Ms. Granito's favorite parts of the exhibition is the museum's 250-square-foot Neapolitan presepio, an antique Nativity scene donated by George Magee Wyckoff and his wife Marjorie Annabelle Wyckoff. Dating from between 1700 and 1830, it has more than 100 hand-carved figures and a creche reflecting the 18th-century Italian village life of its artisans.
It is set in front of a massive reproduction of the West Portal of Saint-Gilles-du-Gard, arguably the largest plaster cast ever made of a work of art -- in this case a Romanesque portal from southern France. The Hall of Architecture, which opened in 1907, and its plaster casts were once dismissed by art connoisseurs as inferior to the originals, Ms. Granito said, regarded as "little more than eccentric travel souvenirs."
• When: Through Jan. 8. Regular hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Sundays and until 8 p.m. Thursdays. Special holiday hours: Closing at 3 p.m. Dec. 24; open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Dec. 26. Closed Jan. 1-2.
• Where: Carnegie Museum of Art, 4400 Forbes Ave., Oakland.
• Admission: Free when included in museum admission of $15; $12 for age 65 and older; $11 for ages 3-18.
• Special tributes: The "Tracking Nature Bird by Bird" tree, covered with birdhouses as ornaments, celebrates the 50th anniversary of the bird-banding program at the Powdermill Nature Reserve. The "Super Pop! Pow! Bang!" tree celebrates comic book art with an Andy Warhol tree. Outside the Hall of Architecture stands the "Green Eggs and Ham" tree, which celebrates the Dr. Seuss book that had its 50th anniversary last year. There also is a " 'Teenie' Harris" tree.
• Information: 412-622-3131 or www.cmoa.org .
But as acid rain and pollution take their toll on existing antiquities, critics are taking a second look and are recognizing the historical and educational value of the Carnegie's collection of architectural and sculptural casts, rivaled only by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Trocadero in Paris.
They provide a stunning backdrop to the trees, one of which marks another 50th anniversary -- of the bird migration research program at Powdermill Reserve. The "Tracking Nature Bird by Bird" tree doesn't have a single bird on it, but everywhere there are references to bird banding, notes Carole Kamin, a Women's Committee member who oversaw the tree's design with the help of Powdermill staffers.
A gilded marlin birdhouse tops the tree, nearly identical to one at the reserve itself, and the tree is decorated with birdhouses and circles meant to refer to Powdermill's bird-banding program. Gold cord and clothespins show how birders mark the spot -- a tree or a shrub -- where a bird has been bagged for banding.
The " 'Teenie' Harris" tree, created by the docents at the art museum, has another great tree-topper: a vintage camera with old-fashioned photo flash meant to shine a light on the work of the famous Pittsburgh photojournalist, who is currently the subject of a major retrospective at the art museum.
There are saxophone and trumpet ornaments, a nod to the jazz legends Harris photographed; copies of his photographs; a replica of a Pittsburgh Crawfords baseball jersey; and five street signs where Harris documented scenes of life in the Hill District: Webster, Wylie, Bedford, Herron and Centre avenues.
After the "Teenie" Harris tree is taken down, its ornaments will be donated to Hill House in the Hill District in the hope they will be used to decorate a tree at that community center next year, said Susanne Wilkinson, a member of the Women's Committee and a docent at the art museum.
The Andy Warhol Museum's tree at the Carnegie this year is dubbed "Super Pop! Pow! Bang!" -- a reference to the comic books that Warhol loved and a current exhibition of paintings of comic book heroes by Alex Ross at The Warhol.
"It's meant to be super fun," said Abby Franzen-Sheehan, associate education curator for interpretation and resources at The Warhol, in contrast to last year's tree, which was about the artist's "muses" -- Liz Taylor, Marilyn Monroe and Candy Darling. "This year, it's pop! pop! pop -- pop culture."
Initially, she and other members of The Warhol Museum's Inner Circle group thought about creating a tree-as-superhero, complete with a red cape swirling around it, but that was physically impossible, given the size of the tree. Instead, volunteers spent about three weeks creating the ornaments with the help of David English, a puppeteer and artist with the Pittsburgh-based Schmutz Co.
Topped by a gilded mask, the tree sports a glittery copy of Mr. Ross' Superman painting, along with silkscreen printed ornaments and giant balls of papier-mache, in the red, green and yellow colors of Superman.
The famous mylar "silver cloud" balloons floating in one room of The Warhol play a part, too, with some of the older ones recycled into big ball ornaments.
The Carnegie Library's extensive cookbook collection is celebrated in the "Classic Holiday Treats" tree, festooned with gingerbread cookies, candy and fruit made mostly of papier-mache and foam insulation, a project overseen by Nancy Lewis, manager of the creative services department at the library.
A small table in front "is supposed to evoke a little girl setting up a tea party in her grandma's kitchen," said Ms. Lewis, whose own mother, a talented seamstress, made the "ribbon candy" from bridal satin ribbon.
Her group of volunteers started working on the tree in September, making papier-mache ornaments in her garage from water and flour and glue -- large ones, "since the scale of the trees is so large."
That they are. Indeed, George Balanchine's magic Christmas tree in "The Nutcracker" had nothing on these giants.
In the late December afternoon, the skylit space in the Hall of Architecture darkens and the lights on the trees begin to glow, creating a sense of peace and anticipation in a setting as hushed and magical as any winter forest -- or ballet stage, for that matter.
Correction/Clarification: (Published December 23, 2011) A story that ran Tuesday about the Carnegie Museum Christmas trees exhibition noted that the Neopolitan presepio "creche" was donated by Women's Committee member Elizabeth McKay Wyckoff and her husband, George, of Ligonier. It was donated by George Magee Wyckoff and his wife Marjorie Annabelle Wyckoff of Sewickley.
First Published December 20, 2011 12:00 am
