The Aesthete in Pittsburgh: Public Sculpture in an Ordinary American City

Abstract

There is a great deal of public art in Pittsburgh. Surveying some examples of this public sculpture suggests some general lessons about the role of such art. Art in public spaces needs to be accessible to the public. One way to make it so is to present local history, commemorating local sports heroes, politicians or artists. Public art also needs to be placed in a way that is sensitive to local history. Most public art in Pittsburgh is not successful because it does not deal with the interesting history of that city. Much sculpture that is successful in a museum is not good public art, and some successful public art in Pittsburgh does not belong in a museum.

Many discussions of public sculpture focus on a few famously controversial artworks. But we can best understand public sculpture by first studying quite ordinary works. A great deal can be learned about the problems and prospects of public sculpture by looking at such art in Pittsburgh. It is a city I know well, for I have lived and worked there for 25 years. Looking around Pittsburgh as if it were an unfamiliar city while writing this essay was revelatory. One learns much about the aesthetic potential of a place by thinking about its geography and history.

This is not a complete survey of public art in Pittsburgh. Nor does it discuss sculpture planned for the near future or compare Pittsburgh's public art with that in other cities. Using a few examples, I simply aim to understand the role public sculpture plays in an ordinary American city.

A Very Brief History of Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh was not always an ordinary place—once it was "Steel City." The Seattle of the late 19th century, it was the place where many new American fortunes were very quickly made. Its site is the key to the city's history—it is centered at the junction of three rivers. The downtown, the Golden Triangle, is the triangle formed where the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers come from the east and meet to form the Ohio. Those three rivers were the basis for the local economy when Pittsburgh was a world-class industrial capital. Coal and iron ore were easy to ship on the rivers to the mills. In the old days, the heavily polluted city was a destination for emigrants seeking jobs. Now, Pittsburgh's steel mills are mostly dismantled, and the air is clear. The city itself is relatively depopulated—many people have moved, some to live nearby in the suburbs.

A great deal of money was made here, but the art collections of the nouveau riche Pittsburghers and their children ended up in museums elsewhere—in the Frick in Manhattan; in Andrew and Paul Mellon's contributions to the National Gallery and the Yale Center for British Art; and in the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. The grand wealth of turn-of-the-century Pittsburgh has left surprisingly few lasting traces in the local art world. Andrew Carnegie wanted the museum in Pittsburgh bearing his name, the Carnegie Institute, to produce exhibitions of contemporary art; he was not interested in building a collection. (He also endowed the Mellon Institute, now part of Carnegie Mellon University, a separate institution.) The disappearance of the steel industry turned Pittsburgh into a pleasant backwater, a typical rust-belt city, with no special concern for the collection or study of the visual arts. The local art schools are provincial, like most such schools everywhere. Sports are important in Pittsburgh— but art plays a relatively minor role in the life of the community.

Pittsburgh's museums lack the funding necessary to present more than a small number of major exhibitions. The most important event in the local art world, the Carnegie International, presents new work by the best-known contemporary artists exhibiting in New York and Europe. A new museum, allied with the Carnegie, is devoted to Andy Warhol, the most famous visual artist born here. Pittsburgh is a typical American city—the ambitious art exhibited here is being made elsewhere. Much of the local...