Events

 On Saturday, Nov. 19, the celebration of Pittsburgh’s holiday season will launch with the lighting of the City of Pittsburgh's Christmas tree on the Portico of the City-County Building, four hours of musical entertainment on Grant Street and the unveiling of the 20th annual Gingerbread House Display and Competition in the building's grand lobby.

The 2022 festivities are presented by the City of Pittsburgh Office of Special Events in partnership with Audacy Pittsburgh stations KDKA Radio, 100.7 Star, Y108, WAMO 107.3 and 93.7 The Fan. Visit for https://pittsburghpa.gov/events/tree for details.

NOVEMBER 19 TREE LIGHTING CEREMONY & ENTERTAINMENT ON GRANT STREET STAGE
The City of Pittsburgh's celebration of the 2022 holiday season kicks off with the lighting of a magnificent decorated 40-foot evergreen on the Portico of the City-County Building on Saturday, Nov. 19, as part of Highmark Light Up Night festivities. The four-hour celebration on the Portico and along Grant Street will include musical entertainment, fireworks, a light show, food trucks and the lighting of the City's official Christmas tree, the only live holiday tree in Downtown Pittsburgh.

The tree lighting carries on a treasured tradition for the 107th year. Pittsburgh's official Christmas Tree was first erected at the construction site of the City-County Building in 1915. For more than a century, a beautiful live evergreen (the only live holiday tree Downtown) has graced the front steps of our seat of government. The 40-foot Blue Spruce will be decorated with hundreds of larger than life ornaments, including Pittsburgh’s Coat of Arms designed by Wendell August Forge and 90 distinct ornaments, each bearing the name of Pittsburgh's beloved neighborhoods.

For tree lighting details, visit www.pittsburghpa.gov/events/tree

NOV 19 CITY-COUNTY BUILDLING PORTICO & GRANT STREET STAGE SCHEDULE
4 - 4:45 p.m.      BEN & FRIENDS
5 - 5:20 p.m.      TREE LIGHTING CEREMONY, FIREWORKS & LIGHT SHOW
5:20 p.m.           SANTA ARRIVES
5:30 - 6:30 p.m. RIVER CITY BRASS
6:30 - 7 p.m.      SALVATION ARMY BAND
7 - 7:45 p.m.      CAPA JAZZ BAND QUARTET
7:45 - 8 p.m.      SALVATION ARMY BAND
8 p.m.                CITY-COUNTY BUILDING LIGHT SHOW

GINGERBREAD HOUSE DISPLAY AND COMPETITION

In conjunction with the Nov. 19 tree lighting festivities and musical entertainment on Grant Street, the 20th annual Gingerbread House Display and Competition -- which returns in 2022 to an in-person format in the City-County Building grand lobby -- will be unveiled at 4 p.m.

“The annual Gingerbread House Display and Competition is an iconic Pittsburgh tradition and I am thankful that it is returning to the City-County Building this year,” said Mayor Ed Gainey. “Community celebrations like this showcase the vibrancy of our city and create a safe and welcoming space for Pittsburghers to celebrate the holiday season.”

Hundreds of gingerbread masterpieces created by individuals, families and group will remain on display through Jan. 6.

Beginning on Light Up Night and continuing through Dec. 31, individuals can visit www.pittsburghpa.gov/gingerbread to view a photo gallery of all entries and cast their votes for the People's Choice Award.

  Chamber Music Pittsburgh (CMP) is honored to host the revolutionary quintet Imani Winds for a chamber music performance celebrating their one-year artist residency with the organization. This concert is part of CMP’s MainStage Live series, which explores the vibrancy and diversity of the chamber music genre. It takes place on Monday, December 5, at Pittsburgh Playhouse’s PNC Theatre in Downtown Pittsburgh. 

“We are immensely grateful for the opportunity to partner so closely with Imani Winds through our inaugural artist residency,” says Kristen Linfante, Executive Director of Chamber Music Pittsburgh. “Their extraordinary musical talent and passion for community engagement have created a rich foundation for this program to continue to flourish. The MainStage concert is our public celebration of this collaboration, their excellence, and the joy they bring to the chamber music community.” 

Grammy-nominated quintet Imani Winds, praised for their “hot rapport” and “conviction” (Gramophone), presents a concert dedicated to works by Black and Brown composers, including Jeff Scott, Valerie Coleman, and Paquito D’Rivera, among others. Throughout their two decades of performance, the quintet has led a revolution and evolution of the wind quintet through their imaginative collaborations, dedication to works from Black and Brown composers, and programs that speak to contemporary social justice issues.

“With this concert, we continue our pursuit to display diverse voices that exist in wind classical music today,” says Monica Ellis, bassoonist for Imani Winds (pictured). “For so long, the compositional points of view of composers of color were not widely seen. We exist to change that narrative. And simply put, the music is joyful, virtuosic, entertaining, unique, and thought-provoking.”

Imani Winds’ repertoire embraces a range of chamber music genres and eras, including traditional works by famous composers as well as commissions from new voices that reflect contemporary issues. This concert is the culmination of the quintet’s year-long CMP artist residency, a program that highlights and supports chamber musicians through performance opportunities and collaborations with local organizations, like the Pittsburgh Youth Symphony Orchestra, Three Rivers Young Peoples Orchestra and Youth Chamber Connection, and Pittsburgh’s Creative and Performing Arts School.

Imani Winds features Brandon Patrick George on flute, Toyin Spellman-Diaz on oboe, Kevin Newton on French horn, Mark Dover on clarinet, and Monica Ellis on bassoon.

Individual tickets for the 2022–23 MainStage Live concerts range from $35–53 and can be purchased online.

 Gavin Benjamin, former resident artist at The Westmoreland Museum of American Art, returns to the Museum for an exhibition featuring photographic portraits of local community members taken during his residency. Gavin Benjamin: Break Down and Let It All Out, the inaugural project of the Museum’s new contemporary series to be featured in its historic paneled rooms, will be on view from October 16, 2022 through February 5, 2023. Through this exhibition, Benjamin works to acknowledge the past while also visualizing possibilities for the present and gesturing to a more equitable future.

“It is my hope that this exhibition will result in deeper conversations surrounding the arts in Greensburg and the longstanding influence of the African American community within the museum setting. I wanted to reframe the idea of a residency as an all-encompassing endeavor that reaches far into the corners of the museum, its collection, and the Greensburg community,” stated Benjamin.

To create the body of work featured in Break Down and Let It All Out, Benjamin photographed over 60 local community members. The exhibition then combines the installation of a domestic space owned by a fictional Black family for nearly 250 years, which includes works of fine and decorative art from the Museum’s permanent collection, with these psychologically rich portraits.

“Museums are nothing without their audiences, and this exhibition makes that explicit. It will be wonderful to see the reactions of the community members featured in Gavin’s portraits as they view this installation in the Museum’s beautiful paneled room spaces for the first time,” indicated Chief Curator Jeremiah William McCarthy.

“I am delighted that we are able to help fulfill the vision Gavin had for the culmination of his residency here at The Westmoreland with the presentation of Gavin Benjamin: Break Down and Let It All Out. Gavin’s work has had a lasting positive impact within our Museum, and we are thrilled to invite everyone into this conversation about art, culture, and our place in history,” commented Interim Director/CEO and Chief Operating Officer Suzanne Wright.

Benjamin is one of five artists to participate in The Westmoreland’s Artist-in-Residency Program presented in partnership with BOOM Concepts and made possible by generous support from The Pittsburgh Foundation and The New Sun Rising Arts | Equity | Reimagined program. The residency program emphasizes the Museum’s commitment to engaging and supporting Black and marginalized artists, to promoting equity in the arts, and to sharing compelling and meaningful cultural experiences with the regional community. Benjamin’s residency occurred from March through July of 2021.

As part of the presentation of Break Down and Let It All Out, Benjamin will take part in an In Conversation public program at the Museum on Wednesday, October 19 from 6-8pm where he will discuss his exhibition with McCarthy. After the discussion, attendees will have the opportunity to view the exhibition. This program is free with advance registration recommended. To register, one may visit thewestmoreland.org/calendar.

Gavin Benjamin: Break Down and Let It All Out is generously supported by The Fine Foundation.

About Gavin Benjamin:
Benjamin makes work that reimagines the genre and traditions of portraiture. Often combining original analog photography and appropriated images with collage, paint and varnish, he creates rich works, which he says, “call back to baroque traditions, but use elements of current culture to provoke, critique and explore.” Benjamin’s work investigates the intersection of culture, media, politics, fashion, and design, addressing questions that confront a man of color in America today. He states that, “My work reflects everything that I’m thinking – it includes everything that I love and everything that I’m challenged by. It’s honest and curious and bright and thoughtful. And sometimes a little dark. It’s all of the things that made me want to be a professional artist in the first place.”

Benjamin was born in Guyana, South America and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. During this time, he interned with legendary portrait photographer Arnold Newman. After school, he worked at agencies representing commercial and advertising photographers, prop stylists, and hair and makeup artists, and then went on to work as a freelance production coordinator/photo editor with stints at Kenneth Cole Productions, Esquire, Hachette Filipacchi Media, and Good Housekeeping.

His work has appeared at the Slick Paris, Sotheby’s NY, Architectural Digest Home Design Show, Art Hampton, Affordable Art Fair, Scope Miami, Palm Beach Modern, Context Miami, Context NY, Art Silicon Valley, and the LA Art Fair.

For more information on Benjamin, please visit his website gavinbenjamin.com.

Measurement Rules a new exhibit at Children's Museum Opens September 15th.  Explore creative ways to measure yourself and objects in this interactive exhibit. How many chickens do you weigh? How tall are you in apples or inches or pennies? Can you use your foot as a ruler? Explore nonstandard ways to measure yourself and objects using items such as balancing scales, odometers, calipers, 3-D imaging and counting “Mississippis.”

Hands-on components:

• Measure yourself in apples or pennies
• Get walking and add to the total yards we’ll calculate visitors walked on our exhibit treadmill
• Tinker with instruments such as calipers, height gauges and go/no-go gauges to explore ways to measure an ordinary wooden ball. Toss the balls down the chutes to test your finding
• How good is your internal clock? Count to five Mississippi and see how close you come to five actual seconds
• Find out how many chickens you weigh at the Chicken Scale!
• Extend a Giant Tape Measure and measure the equally giant fish on our wall mural
• Build your own ball ramp and modify it to make it faster or slower
• See yourself built in cubic-inch blocks as you stand in front of a special screen
• Explore volume at an open-ended Bead Table
• Balance objects and standard weights on a large balance scale

Learn More: https://pittsburghkids.org/exhibit/measurement-rules