I got hired as a public-relations manager for a regional arts center in the summer of 2001. No prior experience. Guilds of regional artists working in fiber or watercolor hung shows each year that needed much touting in two-page press releases. Fabricated quotes, for color. "Not only is it a chance for Pittsburgh to celebrate the myriad artists working in and around the city," says exhibition organizer FIRSTNAME LASTNAME, "but it affirms the commitment the Center has to its founding guilds." Healthy urine could be gauged by the shade of the letterhead. House font: OCR A Extended, because of its 21st-century feel.
Nobody knew anything about the 21st century in the summer of 2001, and nobody had much of a damn to give. Releases got mailed when they got mailed. Budgets were neither looked at nor even made available. Small Andy was crisply dressed and made in charge of marketing, and opening weekends he'd drive the creaking, white panel van to the near end of the Strip District to fill the back with gratis cases of Augustiner Lager, a foray of Pittsburgh Brewing Co.'s toward more discerning palates. Artsy types. At any given Friday night in that city you could walk into a gallery and eat breads, cheeses, and fruits that had been spread out on a white tablecloth for you. You could wash it down with free wine and beer. Nobody carded anyone. Nobody cared.
At the Center everyone was under 40, or acted like it. Vicki, the curator, drove all around the city to hourslong lunches with other curators and critics, "Baby Got Back" streaming out the windows. "I love this song," she said. "Have you heard this?" She dyed her hair metallic carrot and wore jewelry with stories behind their purchase. She brought to Pittsburgh sound artists and digital artists and an exhibition of nudes and cadavers photographed by the wife of Michael York. All the under-40s rallied every day around her, and then she got fired.
And everyone got fired. Joe and Jack in exhibitions. The executive director, the executive assistant. The director of finance. Others left, Heidi and Jen and Andy, in solidarity maybe. This was February 2002. The Center was a million dollars in debt, and walking through its halls and corridors felt like touring a foreclosure home, half the goods from this broken family still stuck around the place, and sudden dusty corners on the landing. One hundred years ago Charles D. Marshall ran a construction company and made a plush life for his family here, a Restoration Style mansion on Millionaire's Row. His neighbors were the self-possessed Mellons, the coke-rich Fricks.
Now, torpored meetings of the staff. Nights in coworkers' apartments it was hard to gauge the end of. Free fall brought its weightlessness, and long bespoken targets got clouded up, such that now it was possible to break, out in Shadyside, the plastic chairs of some bar's back patio. Now it was pornography culled during the workday's downtime, and a whole year's swift and blinded passing. So many new possibilities! Wake one morning in jeans between the toilet and the tub. Wake one morning to find the laptop on the floor, its screen spider-webbed from last night's drunken fist.
The Center shut its doors in 2004, but nothing ever dies in Pittsburgh, not when .5 percent of the county's sales tax funds, by law, the arts. It opened back up a month later. The school. The shop. The gallery space. The Artist of the Year show. The Marshall Building was once painted a sunny yellow. Against grey skies it looks grotty, so wait a few days before taking a photo.
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