Art Around the Arena!

There's a cool article posted yesterday at Post-Gazette (no longer Post-GazetteNOW?) that talks about art that is being installed around the fence of the new Consol Energy Center. I took a stroll by there just to peak, and there is some really cool stuff! I thought it was interesting that the article not only describes how they chose the 'artists' (kids) involved to create these installations, but also included a bit about public art in Pittsburgh:

The rapidly rising number of murals and other art displays popping up around Pittsburgh led the city to hire in 2007 its first full-time art manager.

Morton Brown, the current manager, was hired earlier this year.

A muralist himself, he is charged with coordinating efforts to add pizazz to public spaces. He endorsed the recent idea to place around the city murals by Shepard Fairey, whose politically charged art is on display at the Warhol Museum.

"Public art is about connecting the people in our neighborhoods to their rich historical fabric and improving their quality of life," Mayor Luke Ravenstahl said last week. "We are aggressively preserving the city's public art collection -- protecting veteran's memorials and statues -- while investing in exciting neighborhood public art projects."

Read the full article after the jump...


(Photos by Darrell Sapp for Post-Gazette!)