Author: Samantha Wert
At the center of the Allegheny Landing site are “Piazza Lavoro” and “Mythic Source”, two sculptures created by Ned Smyth, a New York-based artist. I focused my research efforts on these works as I undertook my internship with the Office for Public Arts (OPA), supervised by Dr. Alex Taylor and OPA’s Program Manager, Rachel Klipa. The Smyth pieces are integral to the overall program of sculptures at Allegheny Landing. In the initial planning for the riverfront, Ned Smyth provided the idea for a plaza to the team’s landscape artist, Jack Seay, and the art consultant for the project, Alice Snyder. From there, walkways were created, extending out from the Piazza to the other sculptures.
I had the honor of interviewing Ned Smyth regarding his sculptures and the development of the riverfront. In this interview, available below, I discovered that “Piazza Lavoro” and “Mythic Source” were initially separate from one another. As they are now, the Piazza sits on top of the mosaic piece, “Mythic Source”, but originally “Mythic Source” was located closer to the river. Smyth wanted to connect the river to the rest of the riverfront by encapsulating the food and myth derived from water in historical times. After the installation of the sculptures, however, construction trucks working on the nearby baseball stadium drove over the mosaics, destroying them. This led to a reconstruction period, and the mosaics were reinstalled on the walkway within “Piazza Lavoro.”
In the pictures included above, the first shows the mosaics of “Mythic Source,” the second shows the rear view of “Piazza Lavoro,” and the third shows how “Piazza Lavoro” looks onto the city of Pittsburgh like an Acropolis. Ned Smyth frequently discussed reverence in our interview. The son of a Renaissance art scholar, Smyth grew up visiting what he calls “power spots”: temples, churches, museums, and ancient centers for civilization like the Roman Forum. These are sites of “reverence,” honoring particular people, an emperor, a God, or even the history of art, and he considers them “monuments to life.” In my view, “Piazza Lavoro” is our local monument to life, to the labor that created Pittsburgh, and the energy that continues to sustain it. Exploring that through the Office for Public Art has expanded my own reverence for this work and strengthened my love for public art.
Samantha Wert, Museum Studies Intern at the Office for Public Art – Fall 2022
