Pittsburgh’s NFL Draft Week Comes With a Downtown Public Art Surge
The NFL draft is about to turn Pittsburgh into a city of barricades, foot traffic, and visual spectacle. Hosted by the Pittsburgh Steelers, the three-day event begins Thursday and centers on Acrisure Stadium on the North Shore and Point State Park, where the city’s three rivers meet. Officials expect hundreds of thousands of visitors, a number that could outstrip Pittsburgh’s population. Downtown roads have already been closed in advance, and public schools have shifted to three days of asynchronous remote learning.
But the draft is not the only thing remaking the city center. The Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership has installed more than 35 public art projects across downtown, using murals, light works, sculptures, and window installations to animate empty storefronts and otherwise overlooked blocks. The effort gives the district a temporary cultural layer at the same moment it is absorbing one of the biggest sports events in the country.
Several of the newest works are clustered around Smithfield Street. Joshua Challen Ice has two installations at 144 Smithfield Street, the former Frank & Seder department store, which opened in 1918 and has stood empty on and off for decades. “Aurora V2” features a curtain of polycarbonate diamonds suspended from a frame and lit from behind, while “Light Work (Night Shift)” uses salvaged materials, including TV monitors, mirrors, windows, and neon elements, to suggest a building that is almost overtaking itself.
Nearby, Ian Brill has placed two works in storefronts along the Frank & Cedar Building’s Fifth Avenue side. One of them, “Broadcast,” grew out of the artist’s experience playing with blocks with his toddler and reflects the idea of communities as interconnected systems. On the 300 blocks of Third Avenue and Boulevard of the Allies, atiya jones’s two-part mural “Beam Me Up” brings a graphic, Keith Haring–like energy to facing storefronts.
Brian Gonnella’s “The Point Awakens” adds a more explicitly local register, with references to Igloo, Clark Bars, the late photographer Teenie Harris, and Isaly’s chipped chopped ham. Elsewhere downtown, Seth Clark has installed three sculptures in front of the Heinz 57 Building, and i/thee — the collective of Kristina Fisher, Neal Lucas Hitch, and Martin Hitch — has contributed “For Seasons,” a work that changes with weather and human contact.
For Pittsburgh, the draft is not only a sports milestone. It is also a test of how public art can alter the feel of a city center under pressure, making vacant space feel briefly charged with attention, memory, and use.
