Culture Archives - Page 19 of 41 - Pittsburgh Quarterly

It would be a shame if this strange and glorious book set in Greene County becomes pigeonholed as “a voice from the heartland” or “a rare glimpse inside the Other America.” Sarah Elaine Smith, a Greene County native now living in Pittsburgh, has surely drawn on observed experience for her first novel. But the Carnegie …

An Uncommon Life in an Ordinary Place Read More »

Arts

PICT Conjures a Ghostly Godot with “The Woman in Black”

by Stuart Sheppard

“The Woman in Black” is one of those rare creations, like “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” that has found success in multivarious forms as a novel, play, and film. Based on Susan Hill’s 1983 book, PICT Classic Theatre’s production uses Stephen Mallatratt’s 1987 adaptation (an unusually safe bet for this company that even wrote …

PICT Conjures a Ghostly Godot with “The Woman in Black” Read More »

Opinion

My Flawed Church: A Treasure in an Earthen Vessel

by Rosemary McLaughlin

Pittsburgh Catholics have had a really tough year. Changing the parish configurations of churches around the city at the same time we Catholics were dealing with the painful grand jury report was one crisis too many. Our home parishes were shuffled, our beloved priests reassigned, Sunday Mass schedules upended. Meetings and activities took place to …

My Flawed Church: A Treasure in an Earthen Vessel Read More »

Arts

Still Squonky After All These Years

by Matthew John Milligan

Leave your preconceived notion of an opera in the car. Whatever Squonk Opera is, it certainly isn’t what you’re thinking. A description that succinctly encapsulates this Pittsburgh native is futile. Not quite a rock band, anything but an opera. So, what then? Squonk’s strength lies in its innate pliability. Each show is built atop a …

Still Squonky After All These Years Read More »

History

Finding Solitude in Westinghouse Park

by David Bear

Its pastoral charms are pleasant but unremarkable: 10 acres of well-tended lawn sprinkled with mature trees, a children’s play area and a utilitarian cement block park building. Other than the name, there is no reason to suspect that Westinghouse Park in the city’s Point Breeze North neighborhood was once the beating heart of a web …

Finding Solitude in Westinghouse Park Read More »

History

Exploring Andy Warhol’s Ancestral Home

by PQ Staff

Andy Warhol once said that he came “from nowhere.” And if ever you find yourself exploring the Lower Beskid mountains along the Polish-Slovak border, you might think he was right. At first glance, it appears there are no signs human beings were ever there. But if you look closer, you’ll realize that the holes and …

Exploring Andy Warhol’s Ancestral Home Read More »

Architecture & Neighborhoods

The New MuseumLab: Past Transformed for Future

by Charles Rosenblum

At nearly 130 years old, the building is an antique, but the Carnegie Free Library of Allegheny, known casually as the Carnegie Library of the North Side, was built to look centuries old from the start. Following the Romanesque Revival style of H.H. Richardson’s recent Allegheny County Courthouse and Jail, cut stone, rhythmic arches and …

The New MuseumLab: Past Transformed for Future Read More »

Opinion

On a Pedestal: Fallingwater, Allegheny Conference, Natural Areas Association, Healthcare Truce

by PQ Staff

Now, a world treasure: Fallingwater has gone global. Thanks to efforts from the Western Pa. Conservancy, Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece of modern architecture nestled in the verdant Laurel Highlands has been added to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization World Heritage List. It’s recognition that in our backyard is a treasure considered in …

On a Pedestal: Fallingwater, Allegheny Conference, Natural Areas Association, Healthcare Truce Read More »

PQ Poem

Highland Meadows, Allegheny County, 1979

by Janine Certo

Sunday afternoons, we escaped across green waves of fenceless yards, hopscotched streets with split- level homes—their windowed eyes and garages’ open mouths. We screamed past the chained dog’s bark, lawns skirted with azaleas or crowned with the Virgin Mary. We lifted animals like bracelets from creeks and sat on Central Pharmacy’s curb snapping twigs of …

Highland Meadows, Allegheny County, 1979 Read More »

History

George Washington DID Sleep Here

by Barbara Eichenlaub

Forbes. Grant. Braddock. Duquesne. Washington. While these read like a list of Pittsburgh streets, they have immense significance to both Pittsburgh and its place in American and world history. But that history began around 50 miles away in Westmoreland County, in what is now the borough of Ligonier. It’s been kept alive and can be …

George Washington DID Sleep Here Read More »

Arts

Barebones Brings Sam Shepard’s “True West” to Life in a Stunning Production

by Stuart Sheppard

We tend to think of the American West as director John Ford portrayed it: a vast, mysterious space as cosmic as the Egyptian desert, with the Rockies as our pyramids. The West is an ideal we all hold, a collective mythic dream, something verging on the spiritual the way our conception of patriotism verges on …

Barebones Brings Sam Shepard’s “True West” to Life in a Stunning Production Read More »

Books

Close to Home: Local Poets Get Personal

by Fred Shaw

If all politics is local, perhaps all good poetry might be considered local, as well. Consider how setting and description flavor the Homestead poems of Robert Gibb and the Detroit poems of Jim Daniels. In his seminal essay collection on poetic craft, “The Triggering Town,” poet Richard Hugo asks writers to ground their work, saying …

Close to Home: Local Poets Get Personal Read More »

Opinion

Lost and Found

by Douglas Heuck

Some days are memorable for obvious reasons: births, deaths, weddings and funerals. Occasionally, however, a day is noteworthy not for any dramatic event but for what you suddenly understand. For 58 summers in a row, I’ve gone to a little town in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula called Cedarville. What has turned out, in retrospect, to be …

Lost and Found Read More »

History

50 Years Ago at Woodstock

by George Pettrone

I was a skinny 20-year-old in August of 1969. My Woodstock Fever started on Monday of that week in Rochester, N.Y. I was working at St. Joe Paper Company, catching future cardboard boxes as they rolled off the corrugator. On the way home, I heard a radio ad for a three-day music festival. The ad …

50 Years Ago at Woodstock Read More »

PQ Poem

80’s Body Shop Elegy

by Jimmie Cumbie

We kept the radio on all day long. The news came on at noon. Reagan, Nicaragua, Iran. Tommy brushed his fingertips over the freshly primed fender of another rust-bucket Monte Carlo, feeling for waves, bows, any imperfections in the once rotted places he’d filled and shaped with fiberglass resin. Next door, the whitewashed Lighthouse Salvation …

80’s Body Shop Elegy Read More »

Arts

Breaking New Ground in the Pittsburgh Art World

by Vicky A Clark

Fiberart International 2019 is up through August 24, 2019 at Brew House Association and Contemporary Craft. [ngg src=”galleries” ids=”329″ display=”basic_thumbnail” thumbnail_crop=”0″] “How did a small group of Pittsburgh housewives practicing the dainty craft of hand embroidery give birth to the rowdy, sophisticated, benchmark triennial we know as ‘Fiberart International?’” The answer to this rather cheeky …

Breaking New Ground in the Pittsburgh Art World Read More »

Architecture & Neighborhoods

Bringing Back Pittsburgh’s Steps

by Charles Rosenblum

Along Schenley Drive in Oakland, the Frick Fine Arts building looks like a Renaissance villa, well suited to the grandeur of the adjacent Carnegie Museums and Library in the cultural part of Oakland. At the parking lot in back, though, you find the public steps down to Joncaire Street, a descent of 130-some treads into …

Bringing Back Pittsburgh’s Steps Read More »

Books

Short Takes: “Imagining the Modern,” “The Best Seven Years of My Life”

by John Allison

“Imagining the Modern” is a gorgeous book about a period that not everyone thinks is beautiful: the postwar design of Pittsburgh. It is a truth universally acknowledged that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone, and the popular consensus holds that East Liberty, the Hill District and a key part of the North …

Short Takes: “Imagining the Modern,” “The Best Seven Years of My Life” Read More »

Books

A Meditation of Life in Twilight

by John Allison

Certain Pittsburghers could read Stewart O’Nan’s “Henry, Himself” just for the satisfaction of having their world described by a masterful writer. The Pittsburgh native’s novel, his 17th, takes place largely in the pleasant precincts of the East End, from well-tended houses in Highland Park to the Phipps Conservatory Flower Show in Oakland, Calvary Episcopal Church …

A Meditation of Life in Twilight Read More »

Architecture & Neighborhoods

History, Charm and Vitality

by Barbara Eichenlaub

Saxonburg was founded as a German farming settlement in 1832 by brothers Friedrich C. and John A. Roebling, immigrants from Mühlhausen, Prussia, who purchased 1,582 acres. Destined to become history’s most famous Saxonburg resident, John had studied surveying, engineering, architecture and hydraulics in Europe. He soon lost interest in farming and began developing a crucial …

History, Charm and Vitality Read More »

Arts

“May We Live in Interesting Times”: The 58th Venice Biennale

by Steve Mendelson

I have just returned from my 10th (I think) Venice Biennale. [ngg src=”galleries” ids=”321″ display=”basic_thumbnail” thumbnail_crop=”0″] They tend to run together. Probably more than 1000 artists, 300 Aperol Spritzes, 150 Bellinis and 3,271 hors d’oeuvres. Princess Stephanie has blown smoke in my face from the terrace of the Peggy Guggenheim Museum. The Russians have come …

“May We Live in Interesting Times”: The 58th Venice Biennale Read More »

Opinion

Famous Last Words…

by PQ Staff

Editor’s note: Oil and gas man Michael L. Benedum and his wife Sarah created the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation in memory of their only child who died in 1918 at the age of 20. On the anniversary of the Foundation, which has distributed more than $500 million in philanthropy to Pittsburgh and West Virginia, we …

Famous Last Words… Read More »