Dippy (Carnegie Museum)

Pittsburgh's best-known dinosaur has a double: a real fossil skeleton inside the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, and a fiberglass Diplodocus outside it that wears the scarves. The sculpture, reported as 22 feet tall, 84 feet long and 3,000 pounds, stands beside the entrances to the Carnegie Music Hall and the museum on Forbes Avenue in Oakland. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's history blog says it was erected in 1999 to celebrate the centennial of the discovery of the bones of the real Dippy, which the Post-Gazette said in 2014 stood in the museum's Dinosaur Hall. The University of Pittsburgh's public-art listing credits the work to Carnegie Museums and gives its materials as fiberglass. WESA reported in 2015 that the statue had had no major maintenance since the centennial; crews removed peeling anti-graffiti coating and repainted him, and a spokeswoman said he had never been graffitied. WESA reported in 2015 that dressing him is organized: the museum supplies scarves and hats for local teams and holidays, and staff put them up with a cherry picker, because, in the spokeswoman's words, "Vigilante scarving is discouraged because he’s fragile; he’s a fiberglass statue." WESA photographed a Pride scarf on him in June 2023, and Pittsburgh Magazine noted a small birthday hat during the 125th anniversary of the discovery in 2024. Carnegie Museums, rather than an individual sculptor, is the credited maker. The statue stands outdoors, outside the museum.