20th Century Art Spaces of Black Pittsburgh

a broad history in case studies

Above: three men look into the Halfway Art Gallery, c. 1960-1975. (Charles "Teenie" Harris. Carnegie Museum of Art, collection.cmoa.org).

INTRODUCTION

Even in a city as young as Pittsburgh, everywhere you walk has hosted some story you have likely not heard. As it is everywhere, history is slippery here – especially for those who live at the bottom of the city’s hierarchies.

Like nearly all other facets of American society, the art world has long had few opportunities and little space for Black Americans. Many critics have discussed the place of the Black artist in white art markets, a position subject to constant violence[1] and refusal[2]. Today, many formal institutions have been founded to focus explicitly on Black art, some run by traditional white museum authorities and others by Black artists themselves. Even a relatively small, deeply segregated town like Pittsburgh has a developed ecosystem for Black artists. From the large scale and nationally-focused August Wilson African American Cultural Center to smaller outfits like BOOM! Concepts that are explicitly focused on local talent, Black artists, curators, and intellectuals have fought to build spaces for community expression and display in this city.

These organizations fit into a long history of Black art in Pittsburgh, which has experienced the same hardships as the community itself. Artists have built many other spaces for Black visual art throughout the past centuries, but these spaces have often vanished to racial displacement and gentrification, in addition to the lack of funds that often end arts institutions. For many of these spaces, the only documentation that they existed is community memory and stories from the Pittsburgh Courier, which dutifully reported on the local scene. In this project, some of these spaces have been recorded again, and mapped in the context of the neighborhoods they operated in. This is a small stab at telling a suppressed history, one of community-making and boundless creativity.

[1] Rankine, Claudia. Citizen: an American Lyric. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Graywolf Press, 2014.

[2] Gaines, Charles. The Theater of Refusal: Black Art and Mainstream Criticism. Distributed Art Publication Inc, 1993.

PREWAR PITTSBURGH

SETTLEMENT HOUSES

Art displays have tended to occur in any setting where community has gathered. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, this was often in settlement houses.

Some children play in front of the Irene Kaufmann Settlement House, 1945. (Charles "Teenie" Harris. Carnegie Museum of Art, collection.cmoa.org).

Settlement houses, or simply settlements, were an idea of the late 19th century social reform movements. Arising from Christian liberalism in Europe, settlements were somewhere between monasteries, communes, and contemporary nonprofits. Living quarters were established in poor neighborhoods and members of the settlement would pay room and board to live in these quarters, where they would work together to pursue a broad array of social causes. The seed of the idea was to spread knowledge and resources from the bourgeois clergy and volunteers to the poor, based on notions of charity. Settlement residents acted as labor and women’s rights activists, established nurseries and summer camps, and provided lessons in various topics. Their buildings acted as meeting spaces for labor unions, advocate groups, and general community functions. When the model was exported to the United States, most American settlement houses were established in immigrant neighborhoods, with an eye towards helping integrate residents into American society.[1]

The Irene Kaufmann Settlement House, called the “Columbian School and Settlement” until 1910, was founded in 1895. It deviated from its predecessors in a crucial way. Where the first settlements had been directed by Anglican clergy, Kaufmann was created by the National Council of Jewish Women in the Hill District, then a predominantly Jewish neighborhood.[2] From the beginning, Irene Kaufmann Settlement (IKS) was aimed at Jewish immigrants, founded initially to teach English. As time went on, it quickly expanded its educational functions to immigration procedures, and then to parenting, finance, and art. By 1929, the facility hosted 60 permanent staff members, 20 of whom lived in its quarters, including medical workers.[3] Across the early 1900s, IKS came to occupy a central position in the Hill, acting as a general purpose community center for all residents.

As more and more Black residents moved into the Hill and the demographics of the neighborhood changed, which was normally the death of white flight-stricken settlement house, Irene Kaufmann stayed vital to the community. The premiere photographer of Black life in Pittsburgh, Charles “Teenie” Harris, generated a record of the house in the 1950s. By this point, the Settlement House was central to Black life in Pittsburgh and Black residents central to its operations.

Some young men gather around Jackie Robinson after a speech at IKS, 1954. (Charles "Teenie" Harris. Carnegie Museum of Art, collection.cmoa.org).

IKS was noted for its premiere educational programs in visual art and music. Its Neighborhood Art School was founded in 1917 by the painter Samuel Rosenberg, who would later become a professor at both Carnegie Mellon University and Chatham University, teaching artists such as Mel Bochner and Andy Warhol[4]. The Settlement House also maintained an art gallery, where it showed works by both students and professionals[5]. Throughout its lifetime, IKS was one of few venues available to Black artists, as well as one of the places where Black students could learn art methods. In the early 20th century, Pittsburgh produced several highly-acclaimed Black artists, like Henry Ossawa Tanner and Raymond Saunders – but, lacking support on all levels, these artists had to move from the city and carry out their careers elsewhere.

An interpretative dance group at IKS, 1952. (Charles "Teenie" Harris. Carnegie Museum of Art, collection.cmoa.org).

In 1957, the Settlement House changed its name to the “Anna B. Heldman Center” and continued much of its functions. Art shows in this time were still primarily educational in nature, though the Center hosted a wide variety of performances.[6][7] The Center would ultimately fold in 1964 and much of the building was demolished.

[1] “Settlement Houses”. Encyclopedia of Chicago. Retrieved from encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org on 22 April 2020.

[2] “Irene Kaufmann Settlement”. Wikipedia. Retrieved from wikipedia.org on 22 April 2020.

[3] “The Hill District’s Irene Kaufmann Settlement”. Pittsburgh Post Gazette, 21 January 2015. Retrieved from newsinteractive.post-gazette.com on 15 February 2020.

[4] “The Rosenberg Family”. Jewish Families History. Retrieved from jewishfamilieshistory.org on 22 April 2020.

[5] West, Norine A. “Murals Made By Pupils”. The New Pittsburgh Courier, 7 May 1932.

[6] “Mrs. Rose Milton Exhibits Ceramics”. The New Pittsburgh Courier, 4 October 1958.

[7] Johnson, Toki Schalk. “Toki Types”. The New Pittsburgh Courier, 17 May 1958.

DOING IT YOURSELF

Simultaneously, Black artists did not wait for the recognition of formal institutions. While they may have lacked dedicated buildings to house their work, they did not lack support from the Black community. Thus, in addition to hubs like Irene Kaufman, Black art was conducted in early 20th century Pittsburgh through many informal shows held in temporary venues.

The Delta Sigma Theta sorority were pioneers of this movement. While the national Black sorority had only been founded in 1913, throughout the 1920s, they hosted many art exhibits in unorthodox spaces in Pittsburgh. The Deltas would stage shows in homes and businesses that belonged to Black residents, inviting community members to experience art in places they frequented already. Their largest show was likely their third annual exhibit in 1926, which occupied the whole of the Modern Savings and Trust Company. Many Black people – mostly women – showed a diversity of objects in the show, ranging from their personal paintings to handmade lamps and clothing to their family’s antique collections.[1] These shows, while not quite what we might expect from a modernist gallery, fed the Deltas' and their neighbors' appetites for creativity and sharing. They, and other sororities, would stage shows like this throughout the coming decades: some with collections of random trinkets, some with local contemporary art.

A 1964 gathering of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority, winners of a cooking competition at the Hilton Hotel. (Charles "Teenie" Harris. Carnegie Museum of Art, collection.cmoa.org).

In the late 1920s, the Urban League -- a civil rights organization -- also began to host its own art shows in unconventional and domestic spaces. Many of these shows occurred in churches, which would become key to the developing visual art ecosystem.[2] Churches, like settlements before them, were great venues for art display because they were large buildings constructed for high foot traffic and were known to the community already. Residents of Black Pittsburgh could easily find so-and-so church for the show’s opening or take in paintings while leaving worship. These spaces seem to have been successful because they easily integrated into the public life that their audience was already living.

The most remarkable Urban League exhibit occurred in 1933, where the League teamed with various youth groups to mount displays in two hospitals for the elderly. This touring show was deeply unique. It featured work from trade school students, including traditional art mediums like sketches and oil paints, as well as metalwork and woodwork. According to reports, one participant even constructed a large demo of electrical circuits to power domestic appliances.[3] Like the sorority shows, the Urban League shows were distinguished by their non-institutional, non-fine arts approach. No distinction was made between “high” and “low” art, no one type of creativity valued over another. Rather, the trade student shows were more focused on highlighting one’s talents in any field and demonstrating them to one’s neighbors.

Additionally, these exhibits were set in the locations of daily life. Rather than a dedicated display space of white walls which you must go to, these art shows were brought to you. Especially in the context of segregation, this was a significant removal of class and racial barriers that would have made museums and galleries unwelcome to Black art or Black audiences.

Little visual documentation exists of these informal gatherings, but they were clearly valued by the community, as the basic idea was repeated many times across many settings. Black cultural organizations always valued Black creativity and especially Black visual art, and would engage in any methods necessary to showcase and appreciate these things. Furthermore, the kinds of “art shows” they held do not seem to have been constrained by professionalism or the art discourses of modernist institutions. Instead, they seem to have been interested – first and foremost – in community participation.

[1] “Sorority Art Exhibit Draws Admiring Crowds”. The New Pittsburgh Courier, 11 December 1926.

[2] “Urban League Art Exhibit, March 20th”. The New Pittsburgh Courier, 17 March 1928.

[3] “Urban—Kay Art Exhibit Attracting Hundreds”. The New Pittsburgh Courier, 27 March 1933.

POSTWAR PITTSBURGH

World War II fundamentally transformed American culture writ large, but especially the arts. During the war, the federal government funded artists to teach and create propaganda through the Work Progress Administration (WPA). For many Black artists throughout the country, the WPA provided the first period of stability in their careers. Rather than relying on racist art markets to sell their creations, they were now paid upfront and given positions in schools and public arts projects.[1] This was no different in Pittsburgh.

A group of children gathered for a lecture by Gore at his YMCA exhibit, 1945. (Charles "Teenie" Harris. Carnegie Museum of Art, collection.cmoa.org).

During this time, the Black painter John W. Gore held a solo exhibition at the Centre Ave YMCA. Gore’s show was extremely popular, especially with Black audiences, and many of his work had already been sold to city government and the Irene Kaufmann House. Gore was a writer for the Courier and, crucially, WPA-funded in many projects. At this show, Gore -- one of the top artists in the city -- issued a statement about what Pittsburgh would need to develop its art scene. As reporter Charles C. Cannon records it, "Mr. Gore dreams of the day when the Hill District will offer to the members of its community an art center supplying the following six features: an art gallery, a school of creative art, studios for artists, an art library, and industrial arts department, recreational facilities”.[2] The central tension of Black Pittsburgh’s visual artmaking – deep creativity against a lack of institutional display and broader recognition from the community – had to, in his mind, give way to new institutions, like those being developed in New York City during the Harlem Renaissance.

[1] Lewis, Samella. African American Art and Artists. University of California Press, 1990.

[2] Cannon, Charles C. “Public Demand Extends John W. Gore’s Art Show”. The New Pittsburgh Courier, 1 December 1945.

THE HILL and THE BEATS

By the 1950s, the Hill District – now Pittsburgh’s largest Black neighborhood – had developed into a thriving cultural center of jazz artists and clubs. The Hill’s night life was a hub of musical activity and greatly influential in broader African American culture.

This was accompanied by renewed activity in the visual arts. At this time, an eclectic generation of artists arose, influenced by the philosophies and styles of the Beat movement. Young artists like Charles “Dingbat” Smith created unique pieces from unorthodox practices, blending a variety of artistic genres and mediums with daily materials and their own ingenuity.

Carl "Dingbat" Smith with a work of his, which he created by hammering nails into wood. The visible plane is entirely made up of the heads of nails at varying elevations. (Charles "Teenie" Harris. Carnegie Museum of Art, collection.cmoa.org).

Like their predecessors, these young artists solved their space problem with inventive thinking. In 1960, three artists – Thaddeus Mosley, Charles Anderson, and Lee Cowan – formed the Watt Lane Art Club, named for the street they all lived on. To show their art, the three would simply knock on their neighbor’s doors and ask if they could hang a painting on their porch or leave a sculpture in their yard. Frequently, the answer was yes.[1] Crucially, all three were not professional artists at that time, but working artists. Mosley was a postal worker who would spend the evening carving and the late night sorting letters. This was not an incursion of the fine arts from above, but a bottom-up friendliness between working class people who knew each other well.

Thad Mosley among his wooden sculptures, which he creates by freely carving logs and scrap wood into abstract, intuitive shapes, 2018. (Bill O'Driscoll. "At 92, Pittsburgh's Thaddeus Mosley Has Work In The Carnegie International", WESA.FM).

The Watt Lane Art Club quickly grew in both number and reputation, adding colleagues such as Dingbat Smith and Raymond Saunders to their ranks. Though making very different kinds of objects, these artists were bound together by a love for jazz and contemporary ideas of freedom and individual “outsiderness”.[1] By 1961, the collective was holding an annual art festival at community centers and clubs throughout the city. The Art Club employed its usual public hanging style, but held events at contemporary venues like the Musing Record and Card Shop, which embraced their bohemian ways. The Courier’s Phyl Garland described the Club in his review of their 1961 festival like so: “They came like lonely exiles weary of their solitude, or like inspired children, caught up in the joy of their own fresh ability to sing, to paint, to create. They were young artists of the town, those who had always felt that this was an alien place for them”.[2]

Paintings hung on a fence at the Ammon Recreation Center during the 1961 Watt Lane Art Club festival. (Charles "Teenie" Harris. Carnegie Museum of Art, collection.cmoa.org).

Around 1965, Thad Mosley moved from the Hill to the North Side, where he founded a studio and gallery for his collective. Now calling themselves “Group One”, the loose band of amateur artists had finally acquired a stable place to show in, moving them further into professionalization.

In addition to jazz and the Beat movement, many artists of this generation also pulled influence from African art. In his biography, Mosley describes visiting the Carnegie Museumof Art (then called the Carnegie Institute) frequently to see its large collection of African art of all mediums, especially during the Internationals. He notes that this significantly expanded what he thought Africa was – that it could also be a place which produced great aesthetics.[1] This might reflect some broader interest in Pan-African identity springing out of the Black politics of the time, echoing moves to Pan-Africanism inside the Harlem Renaissance and other art movements of the past. However, images of Africa were still largely mediated through white institutions, and the experience was nearly always indirect for African Americans.

[1] Lewis, David (author) & Graham, Lonnie (photographer). Thaddeus Mosley: African-American sculptor. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997.

[2] Garland, Phyl. “Artists Find Cultural Oasis”. The New Pittsburgh Courier, 26 August 1961. Accessed from ProQuest.com on 14 April 2020.

BLACK NATIONALISM and URBAN RENEWAL

Art is always political, and Black artists in Pittsburgh have always been adjacent to or directly involved in the politics of their age. Black art was fundamentally altered in the 1960s, just as Black politics were, in the form of the Black Arts Movement. The Movement sought to utilize all forms of art to reconsider Blackness in the framework of Black Power. While previous African American cultural movements had broadly focused on acquiring access to resources and reputation within American society, Black Power and related ideas of Black nationalism urged African diasporic people to act independently of racist society and build their own collective identities and political power. This basic principle echoed what the Pittsburgh art scene had always been doing, having by now created a plethora of venues for all arts, visual included.

Halfway Art Gallery director Ewari Ellis with some paintings at an exhibition in the Gallery. (Charles "Teenie" Harris. Carnegie Museum of Art, collection.cmoa.org).

Still, if art was to be political, so too were the art spaces. This came in the form of the Halfway Art Gallery, founded at some point in the mid-‘60s.[1] The Gallery began as a collaboration between St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in the Hill and the artist Ewari Ellis. The project was two-pronged in a two-floored building: on the ground floor was an art gallery, on the second floor a halfway home for recovering drug addicts. Around this time, Ellis was the chairman of a group called the United Black Organizers (UBO), who sought to prevent drug dealing in the Hill District, which they viewed as “permanently crippl[ing]” the children of the neighborhood. UBO urged a holistic approach to resolving addiction, which Halfway was a key part of. They sought to help addicts recover through therapy and support, while also working with drug dealers themselves to reduce drug use by reducing the dealers’ fiscal need to sell. UBO wanted to resolve both addiction and the poverty that drove it, seeing both as threats to a Black “revolution” against white control.[2]

Ewari Ellis (right) and some others, including one Sir John Banks, brandishing a rifle and wearing a "Black is Beautiful Button", in the Halfway Gallery, c. 1969. (Charles "Teenie" Harris. Carnegie Museum of Art, collection.cmoa.org).

Ellis, like many politically-minded Black Americans of his time, was a militant. Halfway Art Gallery paralleled mutual aid programs established by groups like the Black Panther Party, all of which sought to foster liberation for Black people by solving community problems together.[3] In this way, the Gallery marks a noteworthy change over time from the settlement model. While organizations like Irene Kaufmann were initially designed for the relatively wealthy to pass resources down, Halfway and the many Black Power organizations that developed around it were concerned with working within oppressed and needy groups. Art, which was seen by many in that era as a key of self-determination, was a crucial front in that. Art spaces were even more so, as Halfway showed that they could be put to more use than simply hanging paintings.

The ‘60s were a deeply tumultuous time for Pittsburgh and especially for the Hill. In addition to the national strife driving the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, Black Pittsburghers were losing their homes. By the mid-1900s, many predominantly Black neighborhoods in the city had grown very old and, due to the relative poverty of their populations, were often perceived as decrepit or unsafe to live in. Many city government officials and real estate developers believed that the best thing for the city was to tear down aging buildings across Pittsburgh and replace them with new constructions. These constructions were often commercial centers designed to pull money back in from the suburbs, rather than the rowhouses that citizens were used to living in. Against the popular will of the people living there, whole streets of homes in areas like the Hill District were seized through public domain from 1956 on and bulldozed. From the Lower Hill alone, around 1,885 families were forced out from their house.[4]

Mass displacement and other racial violences contributed to a riot that broke out in April 1968, immediately after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The riot was a mix of organized demonstrations by political groups and destruction of property, both rooted in decades of compounded racial violence. Ewari Ellis and other community leaders were heavily involved in the events of the days-long event, trying to rally angry residents and preserving the art collection of representative K. LeRoy Irvis as his apartment building was ransacked.[5] During the riot, Pittsburgh police raided Ellis’s office, finding marijuana in his desk. This would lead him to being convicted for drug possession in 1969, a vision of the punitive drug policies Halfway Art Gallery was meant to replace.[6]

Two viewers examine paintings in the Halfway Gallery, c. 1960-1975. (Charles "Teenie" Harris. Carnegie Museum of Art, collection.cmoa.org).

The political nature of the Halfway Art Gallery illustrates the close relationship that art has had to community and resistance both throughout Black Pittsburgh history. Just as many early 1900s art shows could not happen outside of a curator’s living room, the daily struggles of the city’s residents defined their group’s ideological and aesthetic positions. These things could not be separated.

[1] The first instance of its name in the Courier seems to be in the 1966-9-10 edition of The New Pittsburgh Courier, with Ida Herbert’s column “In Hill District: Play Courtyard Fulfills Dream”; Herbert refers to a playground being constructed next to the Gallery’s lot, overseen by Ellis.

[2] “Militant Group Warns Hill Dope Pushers”. The New Pittsburgh Courier, 18 April 1970, pg. 1.

[3] Horras, Tim. “ ‘To serve the people’: Contribution to a defense of mutual aid, revolutionary culture, and survival pending revolution”. Philadelphia Partisan, 21 December 2017.

[4] Grantmyre, Laura. (November 2016). “Conflicting visions of renewal in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, 1950-1968”. Urban sights: visual culture and urban history, iss. 4, vol. 43 of Urban History, edited by Matt Delmont. Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from scalar.usc.edu/anvc on 17 July 2018.

[5] Mellon, Steve and Routh, Julian. “The Week the Hill Rose Up”. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2 April 2018. Retrieved from newsinteractive.post-gazette.com on 14 March 2020.

[6] “Ellis Appeals Conviction On Narcotics Rap”. New Pittsburgh Courier, 10/18/1969, pg. 1.

THE ART CENTERS

"Joy of Life" (1969, COR-TEN Steel) by Virgil Cantini. The inscription notes that the statue was originally placed on Penn Ave, likely near the Selma Burke Art Center, by the Urban Redevelopment Authority until it was moved a block away in the 1980s. It was commissioned "to represent unity in the face of the violence and unrest of the sixties". (Photograph by Jake Mysliwczyk for the Pittsburgh Current.)

After 1968, many private and public institutions began to – or, in some cases, were forced to – invest in the Black communities of Pittsburgh in large ways. This time frame saw the founding of Pitt’s Black Studies department and many other major changes in the cultural sector of the city very rapidly.

For example, grants from city government and charitable groups like the Mellon Trust allowed for the creation of new Black arts institutions throughout the city. This included several “art centers”, the closest realization to what John W. Gore predicted in 1945. The most prominent was the Selma Burke Art Center in East Liberty, funded by Mellon, and founded by Harlem Renaissance sculptor and educator Selma Burke.

Selma Burke in her studio, c. 1965. (Charles "Teenie" Harris. Carnegie Museum of Art, collection.cmoa.org).

Burke was already a celebrity when she came back to Pittsburgh and her presence immediately afforded the Center an air of prestige. The 1971 opening was well-attended by many people of high standing, including the Black sororities, which she had already joined and recruited to help run events.[1] Having directed similar programs during the WPA period in New York, Burke was tasked with two ambitious goals: to provide an arts-based community center for the people of Pittsburgh and to run a world class gallery of Black art.

The Art Center embraced its community. They offered classes in all mediums of expression, from drawing to photography to modern dance to African weaving, with each session only $2 for adults and $1 for children.[2] Each year they hosted a juried exhibition of local Black art, open to any and all Black people from the Pittsburgh area.[3] Across the institution’s brief history, they curated shows with such names as Romaire Bearden, Charles White, Jacob Lawrence, and David Driskell. For many in Pittsburgh, its annual Haitian art shows would likely have been their first encounter with foreign African diasporic art in a Black institution.[4] At its core, the Burke Center realized a vision of what a community art center strives to: connecting its people to the broader art world through content and to their own artistic agency through education.

Details of "Together" (1975), a bas relief created by Selma Burke for the Irene Kaufmann Auditorium in the Hill House complex. (Photograph by Kelvin Parnell Jr. for NEXTpittsburgh.com).

\Ultimately, the Center was doomed by its funding structure. A project as large as this – to afford the facilities and press to bring in famous artists, the materials for classes, the pay for staff instructors, etc. – required much more money than any Black arts organization in Pittsburgh had ever had, at least since the WPA period. The Burke Center was dependent on the support of the Mellon Trust, a charitable group founded from a portion of the Mellon family wealth to support the arts. The Trust’s funds dried up in 1978 and it dropped the Burke Center without any emergency pay, leaving the staff little advance notice to restructure their already struggling finances.[5] With widespread popular support, the Center was able to survive off of grants and donations for a few years longer but closed quietly and without press some time in 1981. By 1982, the building was acquired by the Kingsley House, one of the original settlements.[6]

The Selma Burke Art Center was part of a wave of investment from various arts institutions and nonprofits into Black arts. In the ‘70s, major museums like the Carnegie Institute and small galleries like the Jade Gallery in Oakland began featuring contemporary Black art prominently, while experimental programs like the Bidwell Training Center showed further how art education could adapt to utilitarian ends. For a brief time, this interest made it possible to realize an art space with sufficient budget and facilities to ambitiously develop the Black art scene. The impact was dramatic – a generation of Pittsburgh Black artists taught there, a generation was taught there. At the same time, the Burke Center reveals the possible dangers of such projects: what happens when the money runs out? What happens when Black art spaces are dependent on business interests and charity from wealthy white investors? What are the risks of these styles of artmaking, especially in the political contexts of the 20th century?

[1] Garland, Hazel. “Hazel Garland’s THINGS TO TALK ABOUT”. The New Pittsburgh Courier, 4 November 1971, pg. 19.

[2] “Spring’s Alive At The Selma Burke Art Center”. The New Pittsburgh Courier, 15 February 1975, pg. 19.

[3] “Fourth Annual Black Artist Exhibit Set”. The New Pittsburgh Courier, 30 November 1974, pg. 17.

[4] "Haitian Art Show Labeled a 'Success' ". The New Pittsburgh Courier, 13 April 1974, pg. 17.

[5] Suber, Ron. “The Fight Is On To Save Selma Burke Art Center”. The New Pittsburgh Courier, 4 April 1978, pg. 1.

[6] Powell, Diane R. “Kinglsey House’s New Home”. The New Pittsburgh Courier, 4 June 1983, pg. 7.

CONCLUSION

Over the past century, Pittsburgh has seen a vast range of Black artistic expression and institutions to foster and contain that expression. These maps are not at all a comprehensive list of the Black arts spaces operating at any given time – they are only some interesting examples of contrasting models and moments. These models have all dealt with the central question of how to display art in a marginalized community. How should art fit into the daily lives of Black Pittsburghers? What is the best way to cater to their needs to express themselves and take in art from elsewhere? What duty do artists have to their neighbors? Time and again, these questions emerge because art spaces are fundamentally related to their communities, as they are run by their communities. Art can only emerge from the artists that share these streets with us. Throughout the history of Black Pittsburgh, these artists have crated ingenious solutions to their problems, responsive to their circumstances, and imagining better ways of living. Though many of these spaces have vanished, that legacy is preserved, that work continues

Some children play in front of the Irene Kaufmann Settlement House, 1945. (Charles "Teenie" Harris. Carnegie Museum of Art, collection.cmoa.org).

Some young men gather around Jackie Robinson after a speech at IKS, 1954. (Charles "Teenie" Harris. Carnegie Museum of Art, collection.cmoa.org).

An interpretative dance group at IKS, 1952. (Charles "Teenie" Harris. Carnegie Museum of Art, collection.cmoa.org).

A 1964 gathering of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority, winners of a cooking competition at the Hilton Hotel. (Charles "Teenie" Harris. Carnegie Museum of Art, collection.cmoa.org).

A group of children gathered for a lecture by Gore at his YMCA exhibit, 1945. (Charles "Teenie" Harris. Carnegie Museum of Art, collection.cmoa.org).

Carl "Dingbat" Smith with a work of his, which he created by hammering nails into wood. The visible plane is entirely made up of the heads of nails at varying elevations. (Charles "Teenie" Harris. Carnegie Museum of Art, collection.cmoa.org).

Thad Mosley among his wooden sculptures, which he creates by freely carving logs and scrap wood into abstract, intuitive shapes, 2018. (Bill O'Driscoll. "At 92, Pittsburgh's Thaddeus Mosley Has Work In The Carnegie International", WESA.FM).

Paintings hung on a fence at the Ammon Recreation Center during the 1961 Watt Lane Art Club festival. (Charles "Teenie" Harris. Carnegie Museum of Art, collection.cmoa.org).

Halfway Art Gallery director Ewari Ellis with some paintings at an exhibition in the Gallery. (Charles "Teenie" Harris. Carnegie Museum of Art, collection.cmoa.org).

Ewari Ellis (right) and some others, including one Sir John Banks, brandishing a rifle and wearing a "Black is Beautiful Button", in the Halfway Gallery, c. 1969. (Charles "Teenie" Harris. Carnegie Museum of Art, collection.cmoa.org).

Two viewers examine paintings in the Halfway Gallery, c. 1960-1975. (Charles "Teenie" Harris. Carnegie Museum of Art, collection.cmoa.org).

"Joy of Life" (1969, COR-TEN Steel) by Virgil Cantini. The inscription notes that the statue was originally placed on Penn Ave, likely near the Selma Burke Art Center, by the Urban Redevelopment Authority until it was moved a block away in the 1980s. It was commissioned "to represent unity in the face of the violence and unrest of the sixties". (Photograph by Jake Mysliwczyk for the Pittsburgh Current.)

Selma Burke in her studio, c. 1965. (Charles "Teenie" Harris. Carnegie Museum of Art, collection.cmoa.org).

Details of "Together" (1975), a bas relief created by Selma Burke for the Irene Kaufmann Auditorium in the Hill House complex. (Photograph by Kelvin Parnell Jr. for NEXTpittsburgh.com).