Introduction – How did we get here?
Every city was, at one time, not a city. That is not to say that the land was empty or unoccupied before Western civilization shaped it into what we know today, but that it wasn’t a city as we know it. The evolution of any landscape into a cityscape can take years, or decades, but in reality it usually takes centuries. Ever since moving to the city of Pittsburgh over two decades ago, I’ve been drawn to the intersection of how the history, both positive and negative, has shaped the evolution of our city, whether it be the neighborhoods where I have lived, the neighborhoods that I have taught, or the multitudes of neighborhoods that I drive through on my way to and from work. How did we get here? What did it look like before? What will it look like hundreds or thousands of years from now?
Once known as The Gateway to the West and always in flux, Pittsburgh is a hodgepodge of diverse neighborhoods shaped, separated, and brought together by a multitude of economical and industrial impacts along with geographical and topographical influences. All of these influences crossing over in unique ways that both separate and connect our neighborhoods. The literal titans of twentieth century industry all started and/or made their mark on Pittsburgh and the surrounding regions. While Cleveland had the Rockefellers, we had Carnegie, Frick, Mellon, and the array of scars that they left on our landscape and our communities, as well as the many institutions that bear their names.
It is the right of everyone now to re-examine history to see if Western culture offers the only solutions to man’s purpose on this earth
-Romare Bearden, September 19661
Humans, as intellectuals and innovators, have always been curious creatures. Our ‘human’ students are no different, especially when it comes to their curiosity and sense of wonder. They always surprise me with their out of the box thinking and their often odd but relative tangents. As a visual artist and art educator, I am always searching out new ways to the curiosity of my students and help them to connect their present to their past. Most impactful is the question: how did we, as a city get from there to where we are now? What does the future hold for my students, my own children, and the generations that will follow them? How did we go from the Western frontier of a nation, to the industrial center at the edge of the Midwest, to a modern city leaning into green technology and architecture? In a city that represents different artistic disciplines and many different industries, Pittsburgh, with its unique confluence of readily accessible rivers has been connecting the East Coast with the Midwest and beyond since before the founding of our nation. We can trace our modern city back to and beyond George Washington’s for an ideal location to build a fort.
To be most specific, the purpose of this unit is to take my students through a journey of Pittsburgh’s history through the lens of visual art and visual artifacts and to show that, despite the mounting evidence of the negative impacts of colonization and the industrial revolution, that there are silver linings and points of hope for the future of our neighborhoods, our city, and the world. There is still so much work to do, but I believe that, through art and introspective education, that we are slowly making a better future.
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