The three-day NFL draft, hosted by the Pittsburgh Steelers, kicks off in the Steel City on Thursday. The main events will take place downtown: at Acrisure Stadium on the North Shore and Point State Park, where Pittsburgh’s famous three rivers meet. The city is expecting hundreds of thousands of visitors—by some estimates, far more than the population of the city itself. The draft is taking over the city to such a degree that roads downtown have preemptively closed and the public schools have switched to three days of asynchronous remote learning.
The Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership has also invested in spiffing up some of the empty storefronts and underwhelming blocks downtown with public art projects by local artists. There are over 35 projects, ranging from light installations to murals to window displays, currently on view downtown. Check out some of the newer projects that have been installed this year.
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Joshua Challen Ice, Aurora V2
Image Credit: Photo Benjamin Filio/Courtesy Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership This is one of Ice’s two installations at 144 Smithfield Street, the former home of the Frank & Seder department store, which opened in 1918 and has sat empty on and off for decades. Aurora V2, an updated version of a previous public art project, is made up of a curtain of polycarbonate diamonds hanging from a frame, which are lit from behind and rustle in a breeze created by programmed fans.
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Joshua Challen Ice, Light Work (Night Shift)
Image Credit: Photo Benjamin Filio/Courtesy Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership Ice told Pittsburgh’s NPR affiliate WESA that he “dreamed up” Light Work (Night Shift), also installed at the former Frank & Cedar Building on Smithfield Street, as a work in which the architecture is “growing and duplicating and kind of taking over the space in a way.” The materials (TV monitors, mirrors, windows, neon elements) were all salvaged, he said, much of it on-site from the abandoned building.
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Ian Brill, Periphery and Broadcast
Image Credit: Photo Benjamin Filio/Courtesy Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership Two installations by Brill are on view in storefronts along the Frank & Cedar Building’s Fifth Avenue side, around the corner from the main entrance on Smithfield. Broadcast was inspired by playing with blocks with his toddler, and is about larger communities functioning as interconnected, evolving systems.
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atiya jones, Beam Me Up
Image Credit: Photo Benjamin Filio/Courtesy Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership “This work kind of just depicts how I feel my brain would look as a regional map, if you will,” jones told WESA. Her two-part, Keith Haring–esque mural is painted on wooden panels affixed to facing storefronts on the 300 blocks of Third Avenue and Boulevard of the Allies.
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Brian Gonnella, The Point Awakens
Image Credit: Photo Benjamin Filio/Courtesy Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership Gonnella’s colorful murals enliven an unlovely block of Smithfield Street with images referencing recognizable Pittsburgh icons like Igloo, the Pittsburgh Penguins’ ice skating mascot; Clark Bars, the underrated peanut-and-toffee candy bar that was invented in Pittsburgh; the late Teenie Harris, a well-known Black photographer; and an homage to chipped chopped ham from the beloved deli Isaly’s.
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Seth Clark, Shaping Home
Image Credit: Photo Benjamin Filio/Courtesy Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership Three sculptures by Clark are installed in front of the Heinz 57 Building, an office building that housed various department stores throughout most of the 20th century.
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i/thee, For Seasons
Image Credit: Photo Benjamin Filio/Courtesy Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership This piece was created by i/thee, a collective of three experimental artists (Kristina Fisher, Neal Lucas Hitch, and Martin Hitch). For Seasons transforms an empty storefront at the base of a parking garage into an interaction installation. Window decals made from temperature-sensitive vinyl will change color in response to the weather and human contact, shifting between shades of blues and purples depending on the environment.
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Owen Lowery, The Worlds of Windows Window Shop for Window Shopping
Image Credit: Photo Benjamin Filio/Courtesy Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership Lowery’s interactive window installation adorns a mixed-used building half a block from the Allegheny River in the Downtown Cultural District.
