Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council maps promote neighborhood art scenes

Having a hard time keeping track of all of Pittsburgh’s art and culture opportunities?

Now, there’s a map for that.

The Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council has developed maps that highlight more than 145 art venues and organizations in Pittsburgh and surrounding areas — Downtown (including Lawrenceville); East End (including The Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg); north, covering the North Side, Cranberry and Wexford; and south, covering Carnegie, McMurray and Canonsburg.

The council comprises more than 600 artists and organizations and provides financial, professional and political support for arts and culture across Southwestern Pennsylvania.

In addition to the maps, the new “N’art” initiatives include media promotions of upcoming events for more than 50 organizations and distribution of stickers that can win holders free tickets and passes to those events and others. “N’art” is an extension of the council’s earlier Restart the Arts campaign to re-engage individuals, patrons and businesses with local arts post-pandemic.

“We decided to continue the goals of that campaign this year to support the arts community still recovering from the covid pandemic,” said Kristen Wishon, GPAC senior director of external affairs. “A lot of attendance numbers are still below pre-pandemic levels.

“The feedback we got from our art community last year is that they’d like to see more specific advertising for their events and organizations,” she said. “That’s when we decided to shift from focusing on promoting the general Pittsburgh art scene to promoting the individual events and organizations.”

Mapping them seemed like a logical first step.

“There are so many different places that folks can explore in and around the city, it’s almost overwhelming,” Wishon said.

Locations on each map are color-coded by discipline, including photography and visual arts, dance, music, crafts and others, along with landmarks in each area.

Paper maps are available at arts venues, coffee shops and businesses across the city. They also can be downloaded from the GPAC website at artsburgh.org.

“Because we’re limited in space on the (physical) maps, we realize we may have missed someone, as well as organizations that don’t have a physical space to put on a map because their places change or they present at different locations,” Wishon said. “Those folks also are listed online.

“There’s more available online than just what’s on the map, and we plan to keep updating and doing other print editions, to keep adding to them and refining them for our community,” she said.

GPAC representatives will have tables at community and arts events throughout August and September to distribute maps and stickers, which can be placed on bumpers, water bottles, backpacks or other personal possessions which can result in freebies if they’re spotted at a later event.

Some of those upcoming events include Friday’s Music on the Mon at SouthSide Works, Saturday’s yART sale at Pittsburgh Center for Arts & Media in Shadyside, the Monroeville Jazz Festival on Sept. 3 and the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s Sept. 23 gallery crawl.