“IT’S LIKE THE RUG WAS PULLED FROM UNDERNEATH US.”
INCOMING The cost of ignorance: Supreme Court ups the ante for bigotry (July 31) “I’d love to see marriage equality here. But we can’t even privatize beer, wine & liquor (like they do in normal states) in all big-box, grocery & convenience stores, let alone enact the freedom to marry. …[N]ot being a pessimist, just saying.” — Comment on City Paper’s Facebook page from “J.R. Graff”
The planning commission approves a sketchily detailed project by Point Park University (July 31) “This is an atrocity. We can’t ever get those old buildings back. They won’t even use the facades on the new building. It is going [to] be an inaccessible blank wall. ... Anyone involved with urban geography and architecture like I am should be appalled.” — Comment on City Paper’s Facebook page from “Christopher Michael Bever”
CLASS DISMISSED Carnegie pulls plug on adult studio-arts program
DJ Terry Lee passes away (Aug. 2, online only)
{BY BILL O’DRISCOLL}
“We’ll miss you, Terry. Your soft & romantic voice brought so many young lovers together.” — Web comment from “John Bartolovich” “I started listening to Terry Lee’s ‘Music for young lovers’ in high school, and his Internet broadcast reminds me of those days. He will be sadly missed by all.” — Web comment from “Patty15206”
A review of Judith Robinson’s orange fire (July 31) “Your review is as penetrating as the depth and grandeur of Robinson’s offering in orange fire.” — Web comment from “Agefsky”
I caught Christ (July 31) “PURE GENIUS — I give this 2 crucifixes up!!” — Web comment from “RG”
“Daryl Metcalfe should move to Russia. Sounds like his kind of place.” — July 31 tweet from “Timothy Havener” (@timothyhavener) about the conservative state rep’s stance on marriage equality
“J
OIN A CLASS act,” read the web page touting the Carnegie Museum of Art’s adult studioarts program. “Let us become your art studio. … A draw-what-you-see class in the middle of the great Hall of Architecture. A portraitures class. Or a study in watercolors. Our studio classes have something for everyone.” The page, since deleted, was still available on July 9 — about the time the museum told instructors and students that, after August, it was ending its venerable program of semester-long studio classes for adults. (The museum’s popular children’s classes are unaffected.) The museum says the move reflects a new philosophy about how best to educate the public about art. But students and instructors — some of whom have been taking or teaching the classes for years — were quick to express their anger and sense of betrayal. “It’s like the rug was pulled from underneath us,” says Janet Jourdan, who recently took a Creating With Clay class at the museum. “We thought we were going back to class [in the fall].”
{PHOTO BY HEATHER MULL}
Carol Zisowitz, among the students protesting the Carnegie’s cancelation of adult studio-arts classes, poses with one of her paintings
“It really is a great loss,” says Joan Gordon, a longtime volunteer docent at the museum who recently studied watercolors there. “An art museum without classes is diminished in its significance to the community.” ADULT STUDIO classes at the Carnegie in
their current form date to the late 1940s. By 1975, according to research by writer David Berger (an occasional CP contributor who volunteers with the Carnegie’s
program), some 3,700 students were enrolled. Over the decades, classes have covered not just painting, sculpture and pottery, but everything from modern dance and interior decorating to metalworking, jewelry-making, fly-tying and taxidermy. Such offerings were gradually pared back. Last year, the program served 422 adult students, including repeat enrollees, in its five- to 10-week classes, says Marilyn Russell, who heads the CONTINUES ON PG. 08
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PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 08.07/08.14.2013