Fort Pitt exhibit lasts through year
The Fort Pitt Museum has extended its “From Maps to Mermaids: Carved Powder Horns in Early America” exhibition through the end of the year.
The exhibition showcases delicately carved powder horns and explores the stories behind them.
Used by soldiers on the American frontier to keep gunpowder dry, powder horns also served as a blank canvas on which they could leave their mark. Soldiers etched names, dates, maps, war records, and whimsical figures into the objects. Surviving in large numbers, carved powder horns represent early American folk art.
A dozen new artifacts from the collection of Jay Hopkins will be added in early September. They represent powder horns made by professional horners, combmakers, and turners in a common style used in the mid- to late-18th century from Pennsylvania to the Carolinas.
“From Maps to Mermaids” is the winner of a 2018 Institutional Award from PA Museums.
Fort Pitt Museum admission is $8 for adults, $7 for senior citizens, $4.50 for children ages 6-17, and free for children 5 and younger. Active duty and retired military receive $2 off admission.
The Fort Pitt Museum, built in a re-created bastion of the British fort originally constructed in 1759, focuses on the role that Western Pennsylvania played during the French & Indian War, the American Revolution, and the founding of Pittsburgh.
Fort Pitt is in Point State Park. For more information, visit www.heinzhistorycenter.org/fort-pitt.
