WQED presents Who Cares About Culture.

A series of programs designed to explore the arts in Pittsburgh.

The problems, as well as the pleasures of providing our town with good theater, music, dance, painting and sculpture.

I think this is a cultural vacuum.

There are only a few areas in the country where, in the sense you can be lively and far out in the visual arts and somehow make it work.

San Francisco comes to mind.

Pittsburgh does not come to mind in this area.

It is no audience for art in Pittsburgh meant to speak of seeing it in other cities.

There is no place for the local people to exhibit at all.

They think that artists are so fortunate.

There is nothing but envy.

And I think, Pittsburgh doesn't have to take a backseat to anybody, really.

As far as culture goes.

Even Scranton has a ballet guild, so we ought to have something here.

Well, I think when art is doesn't have its problems.

Why?

I think creativity has gone out the window.

In Pittsburgh's early days, almost nobody cared about culture.

We were too busy creating a city to worry about the artistic climate.

This was a steel town, and the red glow of the mills was beauty enough for Pittsburghers.

Even in 1947, Frank Lloyd Wright's plans for the Golden Triangle were ridiculed, and he suggested there was but one.

Is that a hope for Pittsburgh?

Burn it.

Ironically, some of the greatest names in the art world are associated with Pittsburgh.

Mellon and Frick collections are notable in other cities in recent years.

Pittsburgh seeing great art, but all too often on a temporary basis.

The international, A Triennial exhibit is widely acclaimed when it comes and goes.

Some Pittsburghers complain that things cultural always seem to be just passing through things, and people.

Yet a quick survey of attractions playing in Pittsburgh in any given week shows that a wide variety of cultural experience is available to the man who chooses to take advantage of it.

What kind of a city is Pittsburgh, then?

Steel town?

You know, I was talking to someone the other day, and it was a comment that, Virgil Cantini made that in Pittsburgh.

The problem is, there's no finished product here.

You know, and everyone is geared to an unfinished product, meaning steel.

You know, first of all, it's walkable.

But it's not like New York that you have to cover hundreds of miles.

You know?

I mean, of 10 miles, 20 miles, I can walk it and experience it.

And for me, Pittsburgh is what, Rome is for Fellini.

It is a working city.

That's why I love Pittsburgh.

Then you have all the races, all religions, and it's a it's a working city.

I think Pittsburgh is a very substantial city, as a matter of fact, I'm very fond of it because in many respects it reminds me of my own hometown, which is San Francisco, where I was born.

And I like the hills and the panoramas and the rivers.

So to remind me in some ways of the bay and, I like the old houses and the very substantial, texture and character of the community, which was, built originally like from with the pioneers and the immigrant, workers who came over from Europe.

Perhaps Pittsburgh's best known and best attended art show is the annual Three Rivers Arts Festival.

Regional artists are invited to submit painting, sculpture and craft for jury selection and outdoor exhibition in the Golden Triangle.

More permanent is the Arts and Crafts Center in Shadyside, where there's a continuing series of exhibits by members plus classes open to the public.

The Associated Artists hold an annual spring exhibit at the Carnegie Museum, usually attended by large crowds and considerable controversy.

I think Pittsburgh has a great deal, to look at.

And, to be proud of in the work of the painters and sculptors of this area.

Well, if you don't belong to associate artist, you're not recognized as an artist in Pittsburgh.

It's that simple.

You know, you're just you're an up and coming young artist.

Even if you are 85, the Pittsburgh plan for art makes it possible for members to rent and purchase contemporary works of art.

They sponsor a school or caravan program, whereby participating schools visit the plan and choose a painting for their classroom.

Yeah, I like that.

I see it.

I like the blue one.

I just like this one.

You do?

I think it's different.

That's why, in my opinion, they don't have any artistic value.

But they're not.

But they're put in here like one had a blue rim around it and then just green thrown in the middle.

And it looked like any kindergartner could do it.

Plan director Rebecca Berman's had more trouble with adults than with the children.

At one time, people would come in and laugh.

And that is the one thing that that incites me to.

Well, I could kill them.

Today, They don't laugh so much, and they're a little more dignified about, well, looking at modern art.

At the halfway Art Gallery on Central Avenue on the Hill, you can enjoy the paintings and sculpture of local artists, listen to jazz concert or hear local poets read their own work.

Any Sunday night.

I think people that come to the gallery now come mainly to see the Hill district and the surroundings, more than to see the gallery.

You know, and maybe after the third or fourth trip they actually come to look at the gallery, but, you know, they come and see what's here.

You know, the Hill, the gallery people, you know, we saw it on display.

In 1895.

Andrew Carnegie presented the city with its museum, and the collection has been expanded substantially in recent years.

Local artists are highly critical, however, of what they feel is a policy which ignores the contemporary, and particularly the Pittsburgh artist.

I feel that the museum has not been doing the job that it should be doing as an educational institution.

They claim lack of space and lack of funds, but actually they have galleries full of inferior, poor paintings which could be relegated very easily to the basement at the present time.

I've been tremendously impressed by the the marvelous accessions that are being made here at the Carnegie, particularly in being Impressionist and Post-Impressionist material, basically, philosophically, when we were building our country, we really didn't have time or the affluence for, so-called culture in the arts.

We did have folk arts and so forth.

And, of course, I think America, for a long time was in the grips of what we call Puritanism and, 19th century Puritanism.

Well, perhaps was a necessity in the transition of our country from an agricultural society, to an industrial one.

So, it became more of a virtue to earn your bread by the sweat of your brow than to, seek out the, the, fulfillment, in pleasure with culture and art and so forth.

But there's no audience for art in Pittsburgh meant to speak of.

So it is, A small audience who, you know, you go to the different shows and you see the same people, you know, I don't know, maybe people don't have confidence in art.

Maybe they don't think they can sell what they have.

And of course, it must be sold.

It must be in order to support artists.

In order to support the arts, they have to be sold, and they have to be of value to the people so that they can buy them.

And the value has to be pointed out to them, and they have to have they have to have paintings available.

They have to have sculpting available where they can see it and enjoy it.

And what what I can do, what I want to do is to create some excitement here.

Excitement is the key word in the Shadyside area, sometimes known as the poor man's Greenwich Village.

But some of Pittsburgh's artistic action is definitely here, and Bernie Cohen's new gallery will be Shadysides.

Third.

A recent development in the art world is institutional patronage.

The Playhouse restaurant exhibits paintings in their dining room.

Foremost among the corporate sponsor is the Bank, offering free exhibit space to many artists.

I think that art very properly can be and should be used in our commercial world.

I think that this is desirable.

I think in this fashion and almost alone in this fashion, are we going to expose art, esthetics and the added awareness of man in society to the average man in the street?

Unfortunately, I don't like to see paintings exhibited in a restaurant, atmosphere.

I feel that paintings should be in galleries, not in banks and restaurants.

On the road to Greensburg, Pennsylvania, there's a different example of the commercial art patron in this large roadside supermarket, George Delano displays paintings he brought from Italy among the lettuce and olive oil.

None of his customers questioned the propriety of the display, nor the quality of the art.

I would like to, continue them with the local talent, let's say.

And, I've talked with different people.

In fact, I stopped at an art show in the city.

They're not too, excited about it.

They don't feel that, a supermarket is a place for a painting.

Just two miles further east in Greensburg is the Westmoreland County Museum of Art.

Some of Pittsburgh's finest contemporary artists have had shows here.

Museum director Paul Chew is pleased with the growing American collection.

When I was engaged as the director of the museum, in 57, the board met and asked me, well, what kind of a museum are we going to be?

So, I felt that with the limited income that we have, above and beyond the working budget, we could then, begin to assemble a historic collection or survey, let's say, of American painting, sculpture and decorative arts.

I'm particularly interested in this museum because it's a beautifully appointed small museum, and it functions in a manner which is very vital, I think, to the community and the surrounding communities.

It's fulfilling an important, function in the Pittsburgh area, perhaps, as a, auxiliary to the, Carnegie Museum, which is, involved and preoccupied with other areas of the function of art in the culture south of Pittsburgh, in Uniontown, University of Pittsburgh graduate students, supervised by Professor John Haskins, are working with collector Jay Leff in an unusual course of study.

This is a group of students, graduate students, three of them from the University of Pittsburgh, and one is senior who are taking a course in connoisseurship in art.

The active portion of the course is that involved with examining objects from my collection and evaluating their cultures, their authenticity, all the factors they can with them through the use of the direct handling of the material, as well as reference volumes, checking back, making comparisons with others to the end that hopefully they will ultimately become very knowledgeable in the area.

In the field of examining art, original art and evaluating it of all types of all cultures.

Right now they're working on African material.

When Pittsburgh's cultural communities discussed comparisons with other cities is inevitable.

Cleveland, for example, is called, as is Pittsburgh.

Melting pot complacent, comfortable, conservative, or, depending upon your companion, progressive, forward looking with Great Britain.

Joe, never a frontier town like Pittsburgh, Cleveland nonetheless has many of the same problems, among them the search for a cultural identity.

The Cleveland Museum of Art is acknowledged is second only to New York's metropolitan enriches, and similar to the Carnegie and philosophy producing artist is concerned, is to give him benchmarks and references of excellence rather than to, pass judgment on too much of what is being done precisely at the moment.

Art museums, are the servants of history to a certain extent.

And, history doesn't become history immediately.

You think Karamu House is also a servant of history?

One of the earliest experiments in integrated theater.

The settlement house is striving to serve the community.

Karamu House was created originally, along lines which might have been considered settlement house line.

Some people compare it with the Hull-House of Jane Addams in Chicago.

It had this major difference, however, Karamu House emphasize cultural problems in the theater and dance, in art and in music.

These are the areas of, major emphasis.

But her original objective was to develop the people of a certain community, and for the most part, they were Negroes, and the minority group give them a chance to express themselves culturally with the idea that this cultural development would have a constructive impact on the community.

More than 50 years old, the Cleveland Playhouse is presided over by K. Elmo Lowe He's produced hundreds of plays, and there are three theaters, ranging from Shakespeare to Albee to Arthur Miller.

He's realistic about his job, adverse comment on no matter what you do.

I mean, it doesn't make any difference.

I read, Swope said something.

I think everybody thought was in the paper.

He said that he had many, many, solutions to for success.

There are many rules for success.

But he had one basic rule for failure, that is to try to please everybody.

Meanwhile, back in Pittsburgh, the Playhouse is trying to decide just whom they should please.

The resulting struggle split the community and the board of directors into several quarreling factors.

We're still engaged in a quest for quality drama for the people of the Pittsburgh area.

We, think that that resides primarily in having a a chief director, somebody in charge of the production who, is highly competent and, knows what good drama is and knows how to produce it.

I think that, the situation here, though, is clouded.

The board of directors, was warned and agreed to a three year period of, rather rocky transition from a community theater to a resident professional theater in which you would lose 30 to 50% of the of the old audience and gain a new audience that would be larger.

And they accepted the fact that there might be a time in which you would go backwards before you went forward.

I, feel that there was not enough audience response to the program this year for me to be willing to say that it had, dramatic quality, because I feel that you have to get, you have to have an appeal to an audience.

The board accuses me of not not trying to please the public of defying the public.

It raises the question, what is the public?

Is the public the membership of this club?

I doubt it.

I don't think that, the public is adequately represented by, the men on this board.

Mr.

Hancock's contract was not renewed, but the decision of the Playhouse board of directors was not a unanimous one.

For two years, we have attempted to achieve a firm commitment on the part of the Pittsburgh Playhouse to professional resident theater of quality.

Majority of the board have demonstrated that either the unwillingness or inability to make such a commitment.

Therefore, we, the undersigned, hereby tender our resignations from the Executive Board of the Playhouse.

At this point, we want to identify ourselves as a rallying point for those who are interested in the creation and growth of a professional resident theater, which is both entertaining and exciting.

But I think that there is historically and it's still alive and kicking, an establishment that's making, the decisions, really calling the shots.

I think that the exciting thing about what's happening now is that, The public is, in a way, getting, awakening to, to the power that they can exert the resignations of those people from the board.

And the letters have been pouring in.

And the response that one senses generally from the public is a very encouraging one.

I'm not.

So, immodest to think that, that my being fired here means the end of good theater in Pittsburgh.

Well, this is the old Shiloh Theater.

And at the moment, we are working on a project to start a new repertory theater here on Mount Washington.

It will be converted.

This is Jack Brown, who's beginning a new repertory theater on Mount Washington.

The organization will be known as the Pittsburgh Performing Artists Foundation, a nonprofit corporation.

And it will be geared to complement the cultural and theatrical activities here in the city of Pittsburgh and the tri state area.

When we attended the opening of, hello, Dolly!

With Carol Channing, there was a standing ovation.

And it was wonderful to see.

And I, it was a tremendous thing, for me, because I believe in the audiences in Pittsburgh, if they're motivated.

I think what the Playhouse has done is tremendous, in terms of experimental theater and should be done.

But at the same time, I also think that what they have done is surfeit the market with too much experimental theater and not enough of the other kind that can help pay for more experimental theater.

I think that's the primary function of theater is to entertain.

I think it has to do that before it does anything else.

And if you can be as stimulating or as, experimental as you want, if it's not entertaining, an audience doesn't want to see it, and nor do I, I think that that's the first, first basis of the theater.

I think that you then do have a certain obligation when you take public funds, to go on and do something else.

In addition to entertaining, Pittsburgh has a huge population and the entertainment seeking population has a variety of tastes and desires.

And we want to try to gear the selection of the plays so that it will attract a little bit of everyone in the theater.

You don't have an audience that is a, homogeneous audience.

You have a heterogeneous audience.

You have butchers and bakers and candlestick makers and PhDs and dropouts.

And, this is our object in life is to play with these people, is to play to a broad spectrum.

The Freedom Readers, directed by Peter Fresh, is appealing to specialized audiences dedicated to the exploration of human relations.

The freedom readers have no permanent home.

Rather, they go into the community where conventional theater does not penetrate.

It's a great pleasure to go into any, theater hall, auditorium, speak with the people afterward, people who perhaps have never even seen a play before, and find out that it's one of the great experiences of their life.

I think, Pittsburgh is built for a place like this.

Dancer and choreographer Jeanne Beaman worked with a student group at the University of Pittsburgh, and feels our city's dance audience is limited.

For anything that is, new and experimental and different, there is not a large dance audience in Pittsburgh for that sort of performance.

They're even very skeptical of even bringing Martha Graham, who was born in Pittsburgh, here, because they're afraid they couldn't fill the mask and meet her feet.

I just have to say that the good dancers will leave Pittsburgh.

I would hope very much that some time we could offer, a professional outlet for some of our talented dancers.

We need an opportunity for our young dancers to perform and then for the people of Pittsburgh to see them.

Perhaps Pittsburgh's musical community is the target for less criticism than other artistic endeavors.

So, you know, I get around to many places in the country playing solo paintings and conventions and clinics and in conducting that kind of thing.

And, I must say, I've seen many, many worse places, even so-called cultural centers for actual productivity and standard.

I think we have an amazing amount.

And of course, I speak mostly from music, but we do have a fine museum.

We have we have every kind of cultural outlet, I think, in Pittsburgh possible, and good arts and crafts center, many, many music courses, two universities that provide a lot of music on their own, the Splendid Orchestra.

And, I think we do, actually, that is almost too much.

It's it's almost an embarrassment of riches.

Now, you know, we, do a lot of touring, so we have a very good way of comparing audiences.

And everybody that works here, I think, feels that our own audience, the symphony audience, is one of the warmest and most responsive that we play for.

It really is marvelous.

I think most, orchestra audiences are conservative.

All big organizations that cost a lot of money are sort of the establishment, and the establishment in general is not too experimental.

It it's in the nature of the beast that it, experiments in a rather timid way.

For many years, Pittsburgh's been plagued with the problem of finding a permanent home for its symphony.

The old Penn Theater may be renovated for the orchestra, but many still hope a center will be built on the lower hill for all of Pittsburgh's cultural attractions.

Some, however, believe the symphony should stay in Oakland.

The people on the hill feel that we should have housing here instead of a symphony, because we feel it would be more beneficial to have housing here than a symphony.

A symphony means very little to the people here in the hill.

The preliminary plans have been finished are still being somewhat revised.

However, the financing is virtually in hand, with the exception of, problems about the continuing cost of maintaining the cultural center.

$46 million is a lot of money to put into a symphony.

When you think of houses right across the street where people are living with children, with leaky roofs and no hot water and nothing like that, seem like they could spend at least $100,000 and put up a few houses.

And I think from that standpoint, the Symphony hall is going to be a unifying force, much more so than a dividing for us.

Well, you know, I would say no symphony.

Definitely I would just if I could just wave a magic wand, I would just say, take it into Oakland where I belong and put some houses here where we can live.

The American Wind Symphony is one musical organization which doesn't worry about a home.

The orchestra travels by barge on inland waterways during the summer months.

They park at the point where audiences can listen, and then buoyed the barge to enjoy the art exhibits.

Pittsburgh Opera, however, must rent space at this area.

Director Richard Carp is enthusiastic about Pittsburgh audiences, but he'd prefer a chance to experiment more, with less emphasis on box office success among cultural groups in Pittsburgh.

The question, as always, is who will pay the bills?

Well, I think the, supportive of organizations of this type subsidize, and perhaps all performing arts organizations, should be based in the community.

And, yeah, the vagaries of public support and campaigning from year to year.

Some are great years for campaigning.

They're vintages, like in wines, you know, you have a good year and you have a bad year.

And that's sort of general from one end of the country to the other, depending on economic conditions.

The community must raise annually over a million and a half dollars.

And I don't think that we can raise this type of money unless we do it on a much broader base.

And I think it's going to require a united front type of drive to do it.

There's been a great emphasis on government support of the arts, and certainly, there's a great deal to be said for, some form of government support, which means that tax dollars do, help to sustain, something that's part of the public.

Well, although the state constitution prohibits outright grants, the city can purchase cultural services.

The city of Pittsburgh has the power to provide, recreation.

And obviously, we operate parks and other facilities, to provide recreation, for our people so that in addition to entering into agreements ourselves to, let's say hire a band or an orchestra to perform a public concert, we also have the power to hire, in effect or to pay, a cultural organization for providing these kinds of services to the city Theodore Hazlett is chairman of the newly formed State Council on the Arts.

We plan to visit all sections of the state and interview the various groups that are involved in the cultural activities, and then we will develop a program which we hope will be funded by the state legislature.

Most educators believe the hope for the future of the artistic community lies in exposure now for the young.

Encourage children to visit museums.

Let them participate in art classes.

Support young people, symphony concerts, projects like Gateway to Music and the Vanguard Theater, where performers go into the schools.

Those who care about culture now and for future generations must care about the creative person is contribution is to be welcomed, encouraged, cherished.

For it is unique.

The artist is an individual.

His approach to life is highly personal.

But through his eyes we see ourselves and our world.

So I don't care about the culture of Pittsburgh because I'm the culture of Pittsburgh and I'm not interested in other painters or what has been done.

You understand?