Author: Archer Klein
Picture the ground floor of Posvar Hall. Continuous renovations have turned old and dusty sitting areas into contemporary study spots and cultural education areas. A long, open area leads to multiple doorways and elevators upstairs. Now picture all six artworks that decorate that space. Can you think of all of them? And if you can, how many of them can you name?
I have been interning in a project called Art on Campus this semester. It is a joint effort by the University of Pittsburgh’s University Art Gallery and the University Library System to identify public art on campus, catalog it, and research it. The goal is to assemble a website with a detailed profile on each artwork so that curious students and visitors can read about anything that catches their eye. As an intern, I have done a lot of things for the project: researching artworks, contributing to databases, conducting condition reports, and searching campus for public artworks.
Finding artworks on campus has made me realize how much I had failed and how much I had not failed to notice around me. Mysterious artworks hide in strange corners and crannies. The Third Century, a work by a Chatham professor, sits in an inaccessible courtyard inside of the Cathedral of Learning, and a so-far unidentified metal sculpture of symbols hangs out by a side entrance of Benedum Hall. Whenever I went out to look for artworks and found hidden gems like these, it bewildered me that I had never noticed them before.
What surprised me even more was what I found when I began looking harder. I expected to notice artworks on every corner, carvings on every building, and plaques on every important-looking wall. But, outside of concentrations of art like the Cathedral of Learning and the Forbes Quadrangle, I found almost nothing. On top of that, only two of the works my colleagues and I found were created by female artists.
Researching art on campus has made me think more about the spaces I pass through every day. Every building and street on campus has a secret or two hidden in plain sight.
These secrets could be enigmatic artworks or forgotten histories that start to become clear when you take the time to look into them. Next time you pass through Posvar Hall, look around that ground floor, find all six works of art, and see how many have names on display.
Archer Klein, Museum Studies Intern at Art on Campus, Spring 2020