Old & New Pittsburgh at the Airport
June 13, 2007 by Mary Jo Manzanares
Filed under Air Travel, Art
If you’ll be flying through Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT), take a look at the new glass art exhibit designed by the Pittsburgh Glass Center, a nonprofit, public access glass studio and gallery.
The centerpieces of the exhibit are two glass mosaics depicting Old Pittsburgh and New Pittsburgh. Old Pittsburgh is shows the glass and steel mills, with billowing smoke mixing through the colorful neighborhoods. New Pittsburgh is in great colors, with blue rivers, green trees and colorful neighborhoods and landmarks. A portion of the “New” mosaic is shown in the photo above. The mosaics are part of a permanent installations at the airport, and are installed on facing walls at the Landside People Mover Trains.
And while you’re at Pittsburgh, you’ll also appreciate the free high-speed wireless service now offered throughout all four concourses, and the food court.
Photo credit: Pittsburgh Glass Center
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Tags: airports, art, b5media, flight attendants, Flyaway Cafe, travel, travel blogs, travel tips, vacation, airports, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh is my hometown where I was born and where a lot of my relatives, including my mom, still live. Unfortunately, many people still have the old Pgh in mind when they think of the city, but the new Pgh is really nothing like the old, and I love the airport there. You can do some great shopping.
It sounds like it may take awhile for the city to shed its old skin.
If one proper purpose of art be to enhance and enliven, perhaps exactly when least expected (and thus most needed), these mosaics are the real thing.
What an extraordinary find, at a time when airports have become so very “grey” with rife fears of “terrorism EVERYWHERE!!” A time when color itself, once the very heart of innocence and the raw stuff of God’s own creation, has been most cynically pimped out for cheap political capital and smeared into coded governmental “alerts” that presume to tell us, for reasons never disclosed, how close we should be to pure anxiety on any given day.
But oh! when I saw these… I cannot put it into words. There is still beauty in the world, I could feel it, and some masterful hand had somehow found a way to tell a story with color.
How inviting. How majestic. What a suitable welcome to such a rich, textured, and diverse city. I took a deep breath, and a tear came to my eye. I am not that sentimental a guy, really. But I noticed something important, probably the next day. I felt it in my step: I had hope.
Thank you, Pittsburgh, for giving your visionaries voice. And, from my heart (and not for myself alone, I know it), thank you, visionaries. Whomever you might be, thank you for sharing with us your vision of light and color, your tangible love of beauty… and something more mysterious, still…
I really cannot put it into words. But I will say: “You have made a difference.” And again,
Thank you.
I totally agree with your comment, Scott… The artist of the piece is Daviea Davis, who is a neighbor & friend of mine & who has gotten me into doing stained glass mosaics. She has done a ton of public art around the city that’s really worth checking out.
Do you live in Pgh or were you just visiting when you saw the installation at the airport?