“THERE’S ALL THIS OPPORTUNITY HERE RIGHT NOW.”
INCOMING Class Dismissed: Carnegie pulls plug on adult studio-arts program (Aug. 7) “Marilyn Russell’s statement that the museum’s mission is about training visitors to worship their sacred relics more deeply, not to enhance the public’s creative perception, has got to be the most dumbfoundingly ass-backwards remark I’ve ever heard from someone working in the humanities. The whole purpose of the museum and the display of those works is to perfect the public’s artistic vision. Clearly, the wrong people were fired.” — Web comment from “Donald Simpson” “Looking at art and understanding it and how it is made are two different things. … When people have the opportunity to obtain extended learning about the creation of art, they gain a better understanding of how art is made and then they start to spend more time looking at the art. I see these moves by the museum as lazy. There was a basic core group of classes that they could’ve easily fallen back onto — painting, drawing, ceramics and then re-built off of them. ... [I]nstead, they cancel all of them. Shame on you.” — Web comment from “Douglas Wayne Thomas” “Making art is about community and relationship building, about communication with self and others. Doing away with this opportunity is like turning the lights off. What good is [it] if a museum only sees itself as a place where people can go “appreciate” juried art, and not about where they can learn about themselves, too.” — Web comment from “Kenya Dworkin”
{PHOTO BY LAUREN DALEY}
James Eash and Jason Kambitsis, of the Mount Washington CDC, say that homes on Eureka Street in Mount Washington recently sold for significantly higher than homes in nearby hilltop neighborhoods.
HOME REMODEL
Giving a Voice: “Queer and Brown” podcast sparking conversation for a marginalized community (Aug. 7) “[A]s a friend, I can attest to the coaster — even without a recorder going. Love the article and the reason for it. Keep it up! Much success! — Web comment from “Leshell”
“Surely this has got to convince all you non-knitters that knitting is cool!” — Aug. 12 tweet from “Spitalfields Music” (@spitsmusic) about the yarn-bombing of the Andy Warhol Bridge
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HE HOUSE Connie Wellons first moved to in Beltzhoover in 1960 once sat five houses from the corner. Today, it sits just one house away: Three of its neighbors have burnt to the ground, and the city demolished the fourth. “No one is there to take care of them,” says Wellons of many of the homes and overgrown lots in her neighborhood. “The area is depressed.” Such problems are hardly unique in Pittsburgh. Many communities struggle with aging residents who are unable to take care of the property, or don’t have family to tend to it when they’re gone. But the contrast between progress and
PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 08.14/08.21.2013
stagnation can be especially visible in the city’s “hilltop” neighborhoods — most of which are wedged between the South Side and communities like Beechview and Brookline.
Hilltop neighborhoods working to change public perception of their housing stock {BY LAUREN DALEY} While places like Beltzhoover and Allentown share borders with Mount Washington, their housing markets
remain far apart. On some Mount Washington streets, homes sell for more than $130,000. But on sites that are just a block, or even a few feet, away, homes go for much less — one as low $1,000 — if they go at all. “A lot of it is perception,” says James Eash, director of Economic Development for the Mount Washington Community Development Corp. “Two or three houses or two or three blocks make a difference.” Community planners are trying to change those perceptions. A detailed, five-year plan called the Allentown and Beltzhoover Housing Strategy is due in September.