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.
Read more about this topic: University Club (University Of Pittsburgh)
Famous quotes containing the word art:
“What was any art but an effort to make a sheath, a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining, elusive element which is life itself—life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose?”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
“A witch is one who worketh by the Devil or by some curious art either healing or revealing things secret, or foretelling things to come which the Devil hath devised to ensnare men’s souls withal unto damnation. The conjurer, the enchanter, the sorcerer, the diviner, and whatever other sort there is encompassed within this circle.”
—George Gifford (16th century)
“It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say; when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth ... into a liar—that I call an achievement.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)