Fort Pitt Museum to close temporarily for maintenance

The Fort Pitt Museum, part of the Sen. John Heinz History Center museum system, will temporarily close beginning Jan. 4 for exhibition maintenance and updating.
The museum will reopen to the public Jan. 30.
Upgrades will include a revamp of the museum’s long-term Building Fort Pitt exhibition, installation of an 18th-century French trade musket, and cleaning the museum’s diorama of what now is Point State Park during the mid-1700s.
Museum staff members also are busy scheduling activities for 2016, including living history programs, school outreach, scout workshops and an expanding lecture series.
The museum attracted more than 50,000 visitors in 2015. Last summer, it hosted weekly living-history events featuring live musket demonstrations, Colonial re-enactors,and special firings of the museum’s 18th-century British six-pounder replica cannon.
When the museum reopens, the exhibit Captured by Indians: Warfare & Assimilation on the 18th Century Frontier will be on display through May 22. Using documentary evidence from 18th- and early 19th-century primary sources, dozens of rare artifacts and a series of lifelike figures, the exhibit examines the practice of Indian captivity from its prehistoric roots to its impact on modern American Indians and other ethnicities. Highlights of the exhibit include a rare prisoner cord used to bind captives during raids on frontier settlements and items from captured frontier settlers.
For more information, visit www.heinzhistorycenter.org.