Judy Colbert, ASJA, SPJ, AFTRA, SAG

Three rivers, more museums

If you've got a steely eye for art, Pittsburgh's your kind of town

Howard County Times
August 5, 2010
Finding art in the Pittsburgh area starts at the international airport's Airside Terminal, as you approach the people-mover to the Landside Terminal (for luggage and ground transportation). A 28-foot-by-28-foot Alexander Calder mobile, entitled "Pittsburgh," floats above you, not quite within touching distance.

Created in 1958, it was in the original Pittsburgh airport. It traveled to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilboa, Spain for a retrospective of Calder's work and was later installed in the new airport after the steel-and-aluminum creation got a new coat of black and white paint.

It's an apt welcome to this city that enjoys art at almost every turn. You don't have to visit a gallery or museum -- although they are abundant -- to see pieces that are fun or serious. Just look in the T (transit) stations, on the courthouse walls and on the streets and lawns and you'll see art that has been around for decades or is new.

Check the Pittsburgh Arts Council site to download any of the five PDF booklets about Art in Public Places (North Shore, Oakland, Cultural District, Retail District & Firstside, and Grant Street Corridor District) walking tours.

One recent installation is the PNC Financial Services Group's Green Wall at Fifth Avenue and Wood Street in downtown Pittsburgh. It's the largest green wall in North America, about the size of a doubles tennis court. It rests vertically on the south-facing wall and acts similar to a green roof. Each of the 602 panels, each 2 feet square, holds 24 plants that require just 15 minutes of watering once a week. Some plants will change with the seasons and some will even bloom in the spring.

The PNC building is up the block from the new Fairmont Pittsburgh Hotel (www.fairmont.com/pittsburgh), which should receive Gold LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification this year. The interior of the striking glass and steel architecture (so unlike many of the Fairmont's chateau architectural history) showcases works by local artists and artifacts recovered from wells exposed when the foundation was dug for the building's construction.

For more structured art that's still fun, stop by the Andy Warhol Museum (www.warhol.org), perhaps after whetting your appetite with the "Andy Warhol: The Last Decade" exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Art. The self-proclaimed largest single-artist museum in the world is in the old Frick & Lindsay building, where the walls are big enough to display his larger works but the acoustics leave a lot to be desired. The building is wheelchair accessible and is open all year (closed Mondays). The conservation staff has meticulously gone through about half of the 600-plus boxes of the Warhol Time Capsule of papers, invitations, pizza slices and other ephemera the artist collected from the early 1960s to the late 1980s.

At the Carnegie Museum of Art (www.cmoa.org), the country's oldest continuously exhibiting member arts organization, you may find works from the 100th annual exhibition of the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh juried show and other paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, works on paper and thousands of other objects.

Steve Mendelson takes some of the items that were not selected for the AAP show and displays them in a Salon des Refuses (based on a French tradition) at his gallery (www.mendelsongallery.net), which, as a former bordello, is an interesting place to visit in its own right.

You could probably spend days exploring all the major and minor collections. One of the more important places came from the life of steel tycoon Henry Clay Frick (1888-1984). The Frick Art & Historical Center (www.frickart.org) is a 5.5-acre site that includes Clayton (a Victorian house museum for which a fee is charged), an antique car and carriage museum, a greenhouse, the children's playhouse and a café.

More modern examples of today's crafts are displayed at the Society of Contemporary Craft store (www.contemporarycraft.org/The_Store/Splash.html) in the Strip section of town. You can also enjoy some fine cheeses, biscotti and seafood at Wholey Seafood Market (www.wholey.com), where black sea bass, salmon and shrimp are the biggest sellers.

When you want to take in the panoramic skyline that is Pittsburgh, with an incredible sunset and superb dinner, head up the Duquesne Incline to the top of Mount Washington, and enjoy a meal at LeMont (www.lemontpittsburgh.com), Pittsburgh's only five-star restaurant. A small mid-May kitchen fire was quickly extinguished by sprinklers and the restaurant was closed only a few days.

Traveling from BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport (www.BWIAirport.com) to Pittsburgh International Airport (www.flypittsburgh.com) takes less than an hour on the Southwest Airlines non-stop flights.

However, should you choose to make the four-hour drive, you'll be able to stop at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art (www.wmuseumaa.org) in Greensburg, which features works by Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent, Winslow Homer and a magnificent window by Louis Comfort Tiffany. Through mid-September, the museum has a quilt collection on display. These aren't your grandmother's quilts. Although the museum asks a modest $5 admission fee, it is part of the Blue Star Museums Program that offers free admission to active military and their families between Memorial and Labor Day weekends.

Then, just minutes apart in the Laurel Highlands (www.laurelhighlands.org) are two homes by Frank Lloyd Wright: Fallingwater (www.fallingwater.org), the more famous of the two, and Kentuck Knob, the smaller of the two. Fallingwater is the one that's cantilevered over the waterfall instead of buried into the hillside to overlook the water attraction. The 1936 house, built for Edgar Kaufmann, has had extensive renovation, and is still as spectacular as when it was conceived. The custom-made furniture adds to the perfect concept, as long as you aren't too tall. Through the website, you can purchase tickets and watch a webcam of the weather.

When I.N. Hagan saw the home, he commissioned Wright to create Kentuck Knob (www.kentuckknob.com). It's a smaller, Usonian home. The furniture is not original, however, and it's mixed with a Michael Graves teapot and other quirky items. Take the van to the home and take the 30-minute walk through the sculpture garden back to the visitor center. Then, enjoy a scoop of ice cream.

Worth a visit even if you don't spend a night, play a round of golf or enjoy a meal at Aqueous, is the Hardy Family multi-million dollar art collection at Nemacolin Woodlands Resort and Spa (www.nemacolin.com). From famous paintings to a piece of the Berlin Wall, you'll find sculptures, furniture, glasswork and historical artifacts. Surely, it's an excellent lagniappe to your western Pennsylvania art tour.

Judy Colbert is the author of Maryland and Delaware Off the Beaten Path, Virginia Off the Beaten Path, and Insiders' Guide to Baltimore.