Announcement April 10, 2024

Breaking New Ground and Advancing the Arts at CMU

ICA News

Press Release: Carnegie Mellon University Receive Gift Advances the Arts on Campus

In the News

The Art Newspaper: Alumni’s $10m gift to Carnegie Mellon University will support public art and revamped ICA Pittsburgh

Exterior rendering of the Richard King Mellon Hall of Sciences with the Institute for Contemporary Art Pittsburgh in the foreground. Carnegie Mellon University will break ground for the building, designed by ZGF Architects, on Friday, April 12, 2024. Image courtesy Carnegie Mellon University.

Art patrons and CMU alumni Tod and Cindy Johnson have committed $10 million to Carnegie Mellon University to advance the arts on campus, at ICA, and throughout Pittsburgh for generations to come.

$5 million of the gift supports the ICA’s new and expanded home within the Richard King Mellon Hall of Sciences. In recognition of the Johnsons’ generosity, a gallery in the new ICA Pittsburgh will be named in their honor. Carnegie Mellon is breaking ground on the ICA on April 12.

The remaining $5 million will create the Tod and Cindy Johnson Endowment for Public Art. CMU will additionally name its public art curator the Johnson Family Public Art Curator, a position that is currently held by ICA Director Elizabeth Chodos.

Elizabeth Chodos, the Johnson Family Public Art Curator at CMU, with Stephanie Dinkins in front of the artist’s Good Thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds, a 44-feet-long, 8-feet-tall mural installed in the lobby of TCS Hall on the Carnegie Mellon campus. Image courtesy Carnegie Mellon University.

Inverted Dancer by Thaddeus Mosley (installed in 2022), a gravity-defying, 8 ½-foot-tall bronze sculpture cast from reworked wood that the artist carves with the spontaneity of a jazz musician, installed at Fifth and Clyde Residence Hall on the Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh campus.

View of recent public art installation Making Way by Jessica Stockholder. Image courtesy Carnegie Mellon University.

View of recent public art installation Making Way by Jessica Stockholder. Image courtesy Carnegie Mellon University.