In collaboration with The Westmoreland and the Greensburg Art Center, Pittsburgh Watercolor Society (PWS) presents Celebrating 75+1, a two gallery and virtual exhibition. This juried member exhibition runs July 23 through September 26 at these two locations. For more information about Celebrating 75+1, click here.

On view in the McKenna Gallery.

Pittsburgh-based muralist Doug Cooper responds to works of art in the Museum’s Scenes of Industry collection. His work will be interspersed with the permanent collection to further tell the story of the Big Steel Era in Pittsburgh and the surrounding region.

This is the first time that the McKenna Gallery has been utilized in this way, offering visitors a fresh look at and interpretation of The Westmoreland’s permanent collection with the work of a contemporary artist. It is being done in preparation for a complete reinstallation of the gallery and reinterpretation of these southwestern Pennsylvania collections by an outside scholar.

Interested in learning more about Cooper and his long career as a muralist in Pittsburgh and in various cities around the world? Listen to an interview Cooper did with WESA’s Bill Driscoll in 2019 or purchase his mesmerizing book, Knowing & Seeing: Reflections of Fifty Years of Drawing Cities, that’s part memoir and part an examination of his art, from the Museum Shop!

Border Cantos I Sonic Border is a unique collaboration between American photographer Richard Misrach and Mexican American sculptor/composer Guillermo Galindo. Photographer Richard Misrach and composer/artist Guillermo Galindo began collaborating in 2011, after both artists had created bodies of work inspired by the Mexican-American border region and its human impact.

Misrach’s large-scale photographs beautifully capture the various types of landscapes, textures, and experiences found across the almost 2,000-mile dividing line. But, by showing moments of disruption on the land, they also introduce a complicated look at policing the boundary. Galindo’s installation Sonic Border is an original score for eight instruments, created out of discarded objects found and collected at the border.

The composition embraces the pre-Columbian belief that there was an intimate connection between an instrument and the material from which it was made, with no separation between spiritual and physical worlds. Based on the Mesoamerican “Venus calendar,” Sonic Border plays for a total of 260 minutes and is separated into 13 cycles of 20 minutes. Within these cycles, the instruments play in small groups of two or more, or all together as an orchestra.