Postman points out that a great museum in Munich filled with old automobiles, trains and airplanes shows you a vision of human beings as great tool makers who can solve transportation problems. But the Imperial War Museum in London shows you the human model defined by his technical skill in making war. On the other hand, the Guggenheim Museum in New York demonstrates that the highest kind of human performance is expressing ideas and feelings in visual ways. When you choose a museum, you choose the particular vision of humanity advanced by that museum.

Postman's principles apply readily to Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh. At The Andy Warhol Museum human creativity is understood through the example of the Pittsburgh-born artist whose genius led him to the pinnacle of artistic fame. At Carnegie Science Center human accomplishment is defined by technology and science.  At Carnegie Museum of Natural History, we see ourselves as inquiring creatures seeking more knowledge about our common home, planet Earth. And at Carnegie Museum of Art, being human means expressing ideas and feelings through the infinite variety of visual symbolism. Each of the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh gives you a different vision by which to explore what being human means to you.

The way museums share their visions through informal education is a subject of growing national importance. That is why a five-year study based at the University of Pittsburgh is now analyzing how people of all ages learn at art and natural history museums, science centers, zoos, botanical gardens and similar organizations. Funded nationally by The Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the study is under the direction of Gaea Leinhardt of The Learning Research Development Center (LRDC) at the University of Pittsburgh. The investigation is actually a series of studies of learning in museums around the country, and Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh have an important part in the research. The focus is on how groups of students or families incorporate ideas expressed in different exhibits into their own way of seeing the world. The National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities have pooled their resources to support this study.

Everyone has access to informal learning at museums. The Carnegie Museum of Natural History chairperson of education, Judith Bobenage, points out that education begins with museums "speaking" to the visitors with exhibits and objects, and that her department fosters and supports such learning. Her department touches many non-school groups. There are day-long camps for young people, Overnights for families, and a series of Carnegie Lectures on Global Environmental Change for the public. The teen docents provide activities particularly for children, while the Discovery Room welcomes all visitors. The "online" Discovery Room on the museum's website engages visitors throughout the world. Outreach programs include Museums on the Move for special needs people such as children in hospitals, or senior citizens in daycare facilities.

Each museum has its own diverse pattern of informal education. The Andy Warhol Museum takes as its touchstone Warhol's own broad range of artistic interests. Warhol always kept a vital link with the emerging present, and the education programs stake a claim for the museum as a center of contemporary culture with public forums on issues such as "Remembering Diana: Media, Celebrity and Obsession," and by celebrating the Latin-American "Day of the Dead" with altars, performances, storytelling, and costumes. At the Warhol you can paint Easter eggs in Carpatho-Rusyn style (the way the Warhola family did in the Carpathian Mountains of Eastern Europe). In the Weekend Factory, a drop-in studio on weekends, people can take a "screen test," capturing their faces on video with playfully projected images in the experimental spirit of Andy Warhol. "Creative opportunities and choice are important," says education curator Jessica Arcand. "Andy was fond of saying 'museums are like department stores,' and that's a great analogy for museums, where people should be able to shop, look, and make choices about what they like and don't like." She sees informal education happening in "a gathering place, a forum, a place for learning."

Carnegie Museum of Art is a crossroads of ideas seen through the visual arts. Visitors learn informally through the subtle selection and arrangement of works of art, and more directly by labels and gallery guides, and through gallery talks, art activities, lectures and classes. Curator of Education Marilyn Russell points out that new programs like Ask Me about Art and Saturdays for Families let visitors participate with docents and each other in enjoying exhibits. On the first Saturday of the month visitors (even without kids) try their hands at simple drawing games that make them see works of art more clearly. On other Saturdays there are simple clay projects to "bring animals to life" from artworks, and the popular last Saturday of the month draws visitors to hear a storyteller weave tales about scenes in the paintings.

The museum offers hand-on art classes for children from age three to adults. Art appreciation courses provide historical and cultural background for works in the collection and encourage people to compare points of view and ask questions. The popular Lunch and Learn classes give people several approaches to understanding art, and include lunch in the Museum Café.

Carnegie Science Center is a wide-open highway of educational opportunities for all ages. Workshops let you "stargaze" through the telescope after an evening lecture about the stars, or let kids program a "robotic car" for three hours on two successive days, and figure out how to get through a maze. You can learn about the Internet at the Creative Technology Center, and visit the demonstration theaters: the Kitchen Theater, the Works, or Science Stage. During the Mission to Mars exhibit you could compare your physical fitness to that of astronaut John Glenn by taking the "fitness battery" of health tests that astronauts use. There are sleepovers on the submarine Requin, and informative conversations with the knowledgeable volunteers who operate the Miniature Railroad & Village (many of the volunteers are retirees from careers in local railroading and industry).

This self-guided exploration of "what it means to be human" is very easy to take. No grades. No required attendance. The subjects blend into different disciplines, and adults and children do things together. When you find your own level of involvement, the "real" objects, examples, and experiences at the museums and science center stimulate you to explore further.

But each museum also supports traditional school education. Education director Ron Baillie of Carnegie Science Center and his education coordinator for professional development, Barbara Lease, work constantly to improve opportunities for classroom teachers. "We want to be proactive in modeling what is excellent in science education," he says. Science Center exhibits such as SciQuest were created specifically with the advice of the Middle School Teachers Association to demonstrate concepts that are hard to present in class, such as Flight, Waves, and Forces of Nature. The Science Center uses entertaining display technology the schools could never afford, and connects things to the real world. Teachers can study principles of sound waves at the Science Center, for example, and then go to Heinz Hall to hear and study soundwaves in action.

The Science Center tries to help students and teachers and attain the city, state and national standards of basic science. At different grade levels children need to comprehend certain concepts of the physical sciences. Multitudes of students are influenced by the Science Center in this way: 1997 school group attendance at the Science Center was approximately 100,000, and the outreach programs in the schools themselves reached another 200,000.

Carnegie Museum of Natural History supports education for teachers in the sciences and social studies. Local, state and national standards are again targeted. In middle school and high school the concepts include understanding such things as the characteristics and behavior of organisms, biological evolution and diversity, and ecosystems. Beginning this fall, elementary through high school students will use a variety of multi-media in Wild Blue Planet, a simulation exploring the causes and effects of global change.

Museums are often especially clever at interdisciplinary connections. In one tour students use their Spanish conversation and listening skills during a hands-on, inquiry-based tour that is adapted to their own language proficiency. Teachers also draw heavily on specimens and kits from The Educational Loan Collection to support their teaching of science, social studies, language arts, Latin, and math. There are collabortive tours with the Museum of Art for the public and for the schools (including one on math).

Carnegie Museum of Art publishes its Learning Links newsletter for teachers, showing them how to enhance many classroom subjects with art. Sixth grade social studies in most Pittsburgh area schools can be enhanced by visits to the museum, and one program brings students four times during the year. Collaboration with Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh brings Stories in Art, a combination of art and children's literature, to branch libraries once a month. A new program funded by the Grable Foundation will design learning opportunities in the 1998-99 school year, and that will come to fruition when the Carnegie International opens in November, 1999. Colleges and universities get seminars specifically designed around exhibitions, such as the 1995 Carnegie International or Designing the Modern World in 1997. In one research project Chatham College students organized a small exhibition of Japanese prints, and there are college collaborations with film studies, art history and studio art departments.

The Andy Warhol Museum supports education programs through its Mellon Bank Education Resource Center, gives teacher workshops, engages with the schools through school-museum partnerships and education publications, and works closely with urban youth. The museum publishes a community-based magazine called Urban Interview written by students. Here is one vision of what it means to be human, by 13-year old student Love Maria Akins, who is writing about basketball:

And when you have the ball and you are about to shoot it—always shoot for the stars—it's like saying shoot for the basket, don't pay attention to other things, pay attention to the basket. So people, I say 'Shoot for the stars!