New Art Exhibition Curated by Pitt Students Depicts Pittsburgh—Past and Present

PITTSBURGH—A new exhibition portraying Pittsburgh in three stages—its industrial heyday, the shuttering of its steel mills, and its most recent incarnation as a green high-tech center—will be presented from Nov. 1-29 at the University of Pittsburgh Art Gallery in Pitt’s Frick Fine Arts Building, 650 Schenley Dr., Oakland. 

The exhibition, SLAG: What’s Left After Industry? was organized by students enrolled in the Museum Studies Seminar undergraduate course in Pitt’s Department of the History of Art and Architecture. The show features: 

• Selected works from the University’s 1946 Gimbel Pennsylvania Art Collection, an assortment of paintings by 14 American artists of factories, mines, and people bound by Pittsburgh’s industrial past; 

•  Black-and-white photographs by Pittsburgh’s Mark Perrott that document the dismantling of the Jones & Laughlin Steel Company’s Eliza Furnace on Pittsburgh’s South Side; and 

•  Fiber, photography, oil, and other art media by Pitt students and local artists depicting Pittsburgh today. 

The students and their instructor, Janet McCall, executive director of the Society for Contemporary Craft, will host an opening reception from 7 to 9 p.m. Nov. 1 in the gallery. Perrott will give an informal talk at 7:30 p.m. 

“By showcasing a broad range of renderings depicting the construction, deconstruction, and rebirth of Pittsburgh, we expect SLAG to rouse memories of Pittsburgh’s past, provoke thoughts about the present, and open a dialogue about its future,” said Matthew Showman, a Pitt senior majoring in art history and leader of one of the student teams who developed the exhibition. 

For more information, call 412-648-2400 or visit www.theslagexperience.info. 

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