University Art Gallery
Website:
Telephone Number:
(412) 648-2400
Location:
104 Frick Fine Arts Building, Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Description:
Since the late 1960s, the University Art Gallery has presented more than 150 exhibitions in the Frick Fine Arts Building. Centered on a soaring rotunda, our exhibitions have ranged from ancient to contemporary art, spanning the widest range of visual and material culture. Drawing on our collection of some 3,500 objects, many of these exhibitions have involved graduate and undergraduate students in the History of Art and Architecture, Museum Studies and Studio Arts. More recently, UAG exhibitions have especially emphasized artists engaged with local collections and communities, and that address critical social issues. Explore past exhibitions.
With the support of Miss Helen Clay Frick (1888-1984), the Fine Arts Department at the University of Pittsburgh was created in 1927. First housed on the 7th floor of the Cathedral of Learning, Miss Frick endowed the Department with an arts library (now the Frick Fine Arts Library) and a small gallery for temporary exhibitions.
Pitt’s Chancellor John Bowman and Miss Frick discussed plans to offer the Department its own building. But it was nearly forty years later, under Chancellor Edward Litchfield, that the building was completed. The initial designs provided for the Frick Fine Arts Building were vastly different than the building we see today. Helen Clay Frick and the University consulted with several different architects over a period of thirty years, including Charles Klauder (who had designed the Cathedral of Learning), Albert A. Klimcheck, Theodore Bowman (nephew of Chancellor Bowman), and the architectural firm Eggers & Higgins.
Helen Frick wanted a classical design for the building which would include classrooms, lecture halls, studios, as well as a library and a gallery. After many unsuccessful attempts to provide a layout that would satisfy academic needs and a style that would harmonize with the surrounding buildings of Schenley Plaza, Frick turned to W. B. Kenneth Johnstone, former head to the Architecture Department at Carnegie Technical Institute (now Carnegie Mellon University).
