University Club (University of Pittsburgh) - Art

Art

More than three dozen works of art that are displayed throughout the building. Appraised at approximately $40,000, the collection includes oils, watercolors, acrylics, tapestries, etchings, prints, and photography. Approximately half the art, including tapestries and prints on canvas, was purchased by the university for specific locations in the building during the renovation. Other works are on loan from the University Art Gallery, or once hung in a previous, now defunct faculty club, called the Pitt Club, in the Gardner Steel Conference Center.

Ranging from mid-19th-century pieces to newly commissioned works, several of the artworks depict local scenes, including the Edgar Thomson Works by Ron Donoughe, hanging outside the library, Monongahela Incline by Tom Ruddy, hanging in the lower lobby, Early Morning Bear Run by Wang Yubao, in a vestibule near the Thackeray Street entrance, and in the club’s main vestibule, a pair of Louis Orr etchings of the Cathedral of Learning and Heinz Chapel, as well as a depiction of the early 20th-century "Acropolis" plan for the campus designed by Henry Hornbostel. The most visible piece is an acrylic painting of the University Club itself that hangs behind the reception desk; it is by Bedford, Pennsylvania artist Kevin Kutz, whose Cumberland Arches also hangs in the second floor ballroom. An untitled Virgil Cantini sculpture is in a third-floor lounge. Among the new works purchased for the club are reproductions of several plates from John James Audubon’s The Birds of America.