Page 4 of 5
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
First there's lights out, then there's lock up, masterpieces serving maximum sentences
The 2011 Weekend Trips Slideshow isn’t over yet as we head full throttle into Pittsburgh, an exceptionally well sited city that consistently punches above its weight class in so many ways.
For anyone who can remember back to the first page of the first part of this slideshow (and if you can’t remember that far back, you might want to consider getting that checked, it was only like nine pages ago), you will recall that I was still looking for a solid fifth place in my top five all time museum list. And while MASS MoCA is certainly a contender, Pittsburgh is also in the running with the fantastic Mattress Factory, where the mattresses have all been replaced by art, and good art at that. One of the pieces there is one of the most impressive I have ever seen. Called “Pleiades", it is a work by James Turrell located in a dark room in the basement. When you first enter it is not visible, but after ten or fifteen minutes, your eyes adjust to the darkness and you can see an amazing dark red color artwork on the wall, it doesn’t suddenly appear as much as you just notice it, and realize it was there all along. An incredible experience.
The Mattress Factory also offers two Yayoi Kusama infinity rooms, artworks that have huge lines or require hard to get reservations in other cities. Here in Pittsburgh you can just walk right in and stay as long as you’d like. A reason alone to go to Pittsburgh and go to the Mattress Factory.
The view from my club level seats at PNC Park where the local Pirates (aka Bucs) lost to their anagram rival Cubs 6-3 in an often painfully long game. Great stadium and really quite small, at least compared to other MLB parks I've been to.
I waited to the end of the game because it was fireworks night, and fireworks night even included a live concert by rock legends 38 Special. After the often painfully long game finally ended, a centerfield stage was set up and 38 Special were dragged out to perform some of their hits. Then, after every few songs or so, the lights turned off, music played from other bands over the PA system, and fireworks were shot off from the bridges and from the top of the towers across the river. Then 38 Special came back on, and the whole sequence repeated itself a few times in a row. It was a memorable experience, despite the weird start/stop momentum intentionally built into the presentation.
And one last thing, shooting fireworks off the bridges looked great but had an unexpected consequence. After the game, the bridges remained closed for likely legitimate safety reasons, and getting out and back downtown to my hotel was like trying to navigate an all human gridlock on a hot summer night.
Some photos from Kentuck Knob, one of two (relatively) nearby Frank Lloyd Wright houses, and one that was designed 30 years after and 15 minutes away from the far more famous one.
Fallingwater is the most famous private house ever built, and for good reason. Visiting it is a pilgrimage, and I don’t know all that many architects back home who haven’t already been there. The reason to go is that pictures and plans and sections never really describe the building in a way that seeing it can. And now Fallingwater offers reserved extended tours which actually for the first time ever allow interior photography, something ironically not actually pictured here.
You can look at all of the exterior detail shots of the eternally sagging (but now stabilized) cantilevers, or all of the shots of the interior (not pictured here), but truthfully the only picture you really want to see is this one, the classic shot with the waterfall below.
