Events

Western Pennsylvania Diaper Bank is celebrating its 10th anniversary of serving families in the region on September 29th at the Energy Innovation Center with longtime supporter Mayor Ed Gainey.

The nonprofit was founded in 2012 by Rev. Phillip and Cathy Battle, who has led the organization as its Executive Director since its conception. The organization has grown from a grass-roots effort at one church to a robust partner distribution model that serves over 12,000 families in three counties. It

remains the region’s only basic needs bank and one of only two diaper banks in the western half of the state.

An affiliate of the National Diaper Bank Network, Western PA Diaper Bank has served as a trusted community organization, supplying basic needs including diapers, adult incontinence supplies, and period products.

The 10th anniversary celebration later this month will honor the co-founders and the dedicated group of volunteers and community partners who have been instrumental to the organization’s growth. The event’s platinum sponsor,

The ERA Group of Hefren-Tillotson, a Baird Company, has supported past events and First President David Riehl serves on the board of directors of CASA Westmoreland with Cathy Battle. David and his wife Ashleigh, who serves on the board of directors for Western PA Diaper Bank, are actively engaged with a number of local nonprofits through United Way.

According to the National Diaper Bank Network, one in three families struggle to afford diapers for their children nationally. This basic necessity is not covered by any form of government assistance. The Battles first learned of the diaper crisis when the single parents and second generation caregivers in their congregation brought it to their attention. “I find it inconceivable that SNAP and EBT do not cover diapers,“ shares Pastor Battle, who is still actively involved as the organization’s Board President. “I thought for sure they could get help from one of the government agencies or a non-government

organization. I was as wrong as I am compelled to raise awareness of the disparity between families in poverty, especially the working poor and those of us who are fortunate. When We All Do A Little, A Lot Gets Done. ”

The Ohio transplants started the diaper bank at their church and quickly outgrew the space, moving twice before settling into the now 8,000 square foot warehouse in Point Breeze, which serves over 12,000 families with over 2 million essential needs products annually. In 2020 during the COVID pandemic it added a satellite hub in Mt. Pleasant to serve Westmoreland and Fayette residents and the growing number of local families newly out of work.

Last year, Western PA Diaper Bank designed a period poverty advocacy program with funding from The Pittsburgh Foundation, incorporating Black women’s history, advocacy, health, gender economics, and community organizing to provide the program’s skill-building components and content.

The same year it formalized its incontinence supply distribution to better serve the growing need among Pittsburgh’s aging population.

The 10th anniversary celebration event will take place from 5:30-8:00 pm at Energy Innovation Center. Speakers Mayor Ed Gainey and Vibrant Pittsburgh’s CEO Sabrina Saunders Mosby will reflect on servant leadership and toast the supporters and volunteers who have enabled the Diaper Bank to become a trusted community connector. “Western Pennsylvania Diaper Bank has provided an essential resource to our families and most vulnerable communities. As we faced a global pandemic, the needs of families increased, and this vital organization was able to respond”, shares Mosby as she reflects

on the importance of the organization to the community.

Local artist, designer and educator Sarah Zeffiro, founder of Zart Studios, contributed a painting to support the event. Each guest will have a chance to win the original painting. Additional chances to win will be sold at the event. “I’m proud to stand with our community, Rev. and Cathy Battle, and Western

Pennsylvania Diaper Bank in celebration of ten years of service. The artwork “Alive” symbolizes our shared humanity and the connections amongst the 12,000 individuals who received services”, shares Zeffiro. Zart Studios creates projects for clients that include fine art, public art, graphic design, and

interactive learning experiences for all ages and abilities based on its guiding principles of creativity, community, and collaboration.

The celebration will feature live music from local jazz legends Dr. J and Miss Pam of the Afro-American Music Institute, who will perform while guests enjoy dinner by Black Radish Kitchen.

Tickets can be purchased at wpadiaperbank.org and benefit the organization’s

mission to support families in crisis with basic needs. For additional media

information, please contact Cathy Battle, cbattle@wpadiaperbank.org or via

telephone at (412) 506-0436.

 We are pleased to announce we will complete Our Juneteenth African Lecture Series on Friday Sept. 30th and October 19th with Ancient Egyptian (Kemetic) Lectures Series with Dr. Anthony T. Browder (on the 30th) and Prof. Ashra Kwesi (on the 19th) on campus at Carlow University, at the Anthonian Theater, each Program starting at 6pm sharp.

Each presentation will be MC'd by Carlow alumnus, Sabrina S. Mosby, President & CEO of Vibrant Pittsburgh, with a special welcoming from Dr. Kathy W. Humphrey, the President of Carlow University.

These programs are FREE Community events and attendees must register, via the links below, to participate.

As we rap-up our 2022 seasons, please take this opportunity to gain some cultural history and information about our past humanity.

Please share this information with your network and we look forward to your attendance.

For more information, please contact: StoptheViolencePgh@yahoo.com | 724.205.9376

SPONSORED BY: PPG & Carlow University

FEATURED SPEAKERS:

ANTHONY T. BROWDER, Director, IKG Cultural Resources & the ASA Restoration Project karakh2@icloud.com 240-271-5634 http://www.ikg-info.com www.asarestorationproject.com 

Anthony T. Browder is an author, publisher, cultural historian, artist, and an educational consultant. He is a graduate of Howard and has lectured extensively throughout the United States and five continents. Mr. Browder is the founder and director of IKG Cultural Resources and has devoted 43 years researching ancient Egyptian history, science, philosophy and culture. He has traveled to Egypt 65 times since 1980 and is currently director of the ASA Restoration Project, which is funding the excavation and restoration of three 25th dynasty tombs of Kushite noblemen on the west bank of Luxor, Egypt. Browder is the first African American to fund and coordinate an archeological dig in Egypt and has led more than 30 archeological missions to Egypt since 2009. Browder has authored or co-authored 14 publications which are currently used in classrooms around the world and his three decades of study have led him to the conclusion that ancient Africans were the architects of civilization and developed the rudiments of what has become the scientific, religious, and philosophical backbone of mankind. It is from this framework that IKG has concentrated its research and disseminated its findings,

______________________

ASHRA KWESI is a historian (griot) and lecturer on ancient African history and religion. He reveals first hand information from the ancient temples, tombs, and papyrus papers recorded when African people were teachers of the world. Prof. Kwesi brings a wealth of information and a powerful delivery based on four decades of study and tour experience in the African Nile Valley. He spent 14 of those years as an assistant to the noted Kemetologist, Dr. Yosef Ben Jochannan. Prof. Kwesi has performed extensive historical research on location at the temples and tombs of Kemet(Egypt). His wide-ranging study has also taken him to Ethiopia, Uganda, Sudan, Kenya, and Ghana. Additionally, he has documented information on the African Nile Valley history at the Louvre Museum in Paris, France, the British Museum in London, England, and the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Most recently, he presented his findings on ancient Kush at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia, the former palace of Emperor Haile Selassie. This dynamic speaker has lectured at universities and for organizations in Africa, Great Britain, Japan, the Caribbean, and in the United States. He has also appeared on numerous television and radio programs. Ashra Kwesi is President of Kemet Nu Productions and tour leader for the Kemet Nu “Know Thyself” Educational Tours in Egypt and Ethiopia. Brother Kwesi’s visually documented, multi-media presentations include: •The African Origin of Civilization, Reclaiming the African Genius •African History & the Bible •The African Origin of Christianity •The African Origin of Freemasonry •Ethiopia: From Ancient Kush to the Black Lions •Sacred African Knowledge Hidden in America

 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.

The Fall '22 Gallery Crawl in the Cultural District presented by UPMC and UPMC Health Plan is free and open to everyone and features more than 15 Crawl Stops. Expect brand new gallery exhibitions, public art that casts a canopy of color across the sky, unmissable live music marking the Backyard's final weekend of the season, and an outdoor Crawl After Dark experience to keep the party going until midnight.

Check out the full lineup at TrustArts.org/Crawl, including:

American Society of Media Photographers

Photography & Paint: Four Events in One Venue
Trust Arts Education Center

The venue brims with photography! Pittsburgh members of the American Society of Media Photographers exhibit work next to Randall Coleman's interactive photography collection, Bringing History to Life: African American Colorized Gallery, which brings new life to African American history. Pittsburgh Paints Pop-Up, a passion project for First Lady of Pittsburgh Michelle Gainey, showcases Pittsburgh's robust art scene. Capture the moment on the way inside at the Crawl Photo Booth.

Learn more click here:

 Join us for an engaging and enlightening speakers series offering opportunities for self-reflection about our roles in building a just and merciful world that values all. Here's a preview of what's upcoming at Carlow University, 3333 Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh 15213.

• September 22 from 3-5:30pm at Gailliot Center: Here from Uganda, Victoria Nalongo Namusisi, Founder of Bright Kids Uganda, joins Carlow Professor, Susan O’Rourke, Director, Center for Global Engagement, in exploring how to respect cultural norms when working in rural villages to address the needs for clean water as a means for reducing disability and death.
• September 30 from 6-8pm at Antonian Theatre: Dr. Anthony T. Browder, author and cultural historian, who has conducted 23 archeological missions to Egypt since 2009, reveals how ancient Egypt was the light of the world.
• October 19 from 6-8pm at Antonian Theatre: Professor Ashra Kwesi, legendary historian, who brings a wealth of information and a powerful delivery based on almost four decades of study and tour experience in the African Nile Valley, will focus on the Egyptian origins of the Bible.
• October 20 from 5:30-7pm at Antonian Theatre: Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, pediatrician and professor, shares how her research revealed that the children of Flint were exposed to dangerous lead levels.

   Learn More and register:  https://www.carlow.edu/events/

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

They’re back and bigger than ever! After dazzling the region in 2021, the Asian Lantern Festival will make its triumphant return to the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium on select nights starting August 12 through October 30. The all-new display will include favorites from days past: dinosaurs.

Over 50 massive silk and steel handcrafted sculptures will once again shine along the pathways of the Zoo at night, with the largest lanterns soaring 30 feet high and reaching 100 feet long. The lanterns will highlight Asian culture and history while also featuring endangered and extinct animals.

“The Asian Lantern Festival is a wonderful opportunity to showcase our Zoo, our species conservation work, and celebrate the cultures that make this world a special place,” said Pittsburgh Zoo President & CEO Dr. Jeremy Goodman. “The Zoo and our partners couldn’t be more excited to bring the festival back this year.”

The lanterns will be built and installed through the month of July in partnership with Tianyu Arts & Culture, Inc. In addition to the lanterns, themed food and entertainment will brighten the atmosphere of the festival. The Zoo works locally with the Organization of Chinese Americans to organize regional performance groups. Over 120,000 guests attended the festival during the fall 2021 event.

“Seeing these lanterns in the daytime is really impressive, but when they are lit up at night it is awe-inspiring,” said Allan Marshall, Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium Vice President of Internal Relations. “If you thought last year was great, just wait until you see this new display.”

Ticket presale for Zoo Members begins Friday, July 1 on pittsburghzoo.org. General admission tickets go on sale Friday, July 8. Tickets are expected to sell quickly, so guests are encouraged to purchase tickets in advance online at https://www.pittsburghzoo.org/event-asian-lantern-festival

April 30 – September 18, 2022

The Frick Pittsburgh is pleased to present Romare Bearden: Artist as Activist and Visionary, an exhibition of original artworks, limited edition prints, and archival materials through which innovative artist Romare Bearden (1911-1988) celebrated African American subjects, beginning Saturday, April 30 at The Frick Art Museum. Drawing on his own experiences, Bearden created narratives that reflect both the nostalgic rural North Carolina of his childhood and the vibrant urban life of places like Pittsburgh and Harlem. Bearden spent portions of his youth with his grandparents in Pittsburgh, and his 1984 mural Pittsburgh Recollections, installed at the Gateway T station, honors the city’s history and its residents’ work ethic. The artist’s work layers themes from art history, literature, and religion with everyday rituals like family dinners to create visual stories that depict and elevate the Black experience while agitating for social change. Manager of Exhibitions and Registrar, Melanie Groves, curator of the Frick's presentation of this exhibition, commented, “The opportunity to present Romare Bearden: Artist as Activist and Visionary not far from where the artist first took up drawing in his early years, and in a city that inspired and informed much of his work, is an honor for the Frick.” Elizabeth Barker, Ph.D., executive director of The Frick Pittsburgh remarked, “This exhibition, in conjunction with SLAY: Artemisia Gentileschi & Kehinde Wiley, and Vanessa German’s Reckoning: Grief and Light, represents a celebration of Black creative excellence not previously seen at the Frick on this scale.”

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

 For over 50 years, Romare Bearden depicted, defined, and celebrated the life that surrounded him. The exhibition begins by looking at Bearden’s early work—editorial cartoons of the 1930s, Soup Kitchen, a rare surviving painting, and commercial work—examples that highlight Bearden’s interest in issues of politics, race, and social justice. A major section of the exhibition, Visualizing the African American Landscape, emphasizes Bearden’s efforts to depict a layered vision of Black America, held together by history, ritual, and a pursuit of justice. A section titled Bearden and Women features powerful images of women, who appear as healers, protectors, goddesses and conjurers in the world Bearden created, undoubtedly inspired by the strong influential women in his life. The last section of the exhibition, Li’l Dan: the drummer boy, A Civil War Story, presents original illustrations in collage and watercolor from the only children’s book written and illustrated by Romare Bearden. The rediscovered story, published by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers in 2003, tells the story of Li’l Dan, an enslaved drummer boy who uses his art to save a company of Union soldiers. Unique to the Frick’s presentation of the exhibition is a focus on Bearden’s connection to Pittsburgh. Bearden spent a significant portion of his childhood in Pittsburgh, staying with his maternal grandparents, who operated a boarding house for migrant workers employed in the steel mills. Over dinners with tired steel workers, the artist developed an appreciation and fascination with labor, and Pittsburgh appears frequently in his work. The exhibition includes 50 works of art and is made possible by generous loans from the Romare Bearden Foundation, the Estate of Nanette Bearden, and the DC Moore Gallery, NY. Additional works were kindly loaned by local collectors.

More Information click here