Downtown Activation + Public Art
Creating beautiful, inviting streets and public spaces through public art
Developed in 2013, the Downtown Activation and Public Art initiative is a multi-year effort to enhance the Downtown neighborhood through public art events, creating thoughtful and innovative programming that enlivens unique areas throughout Downtown Pittsburgh. Our efforts employ object-, programming-, and community-based strategies to create a more sustainable neighborhood.
Over the past few years, the PDP has successfully implemented a number of programs to enhance the vibrancy of Downtown, from the transformation of Market Square and the expansion of our programming to the installation of public art in Strawberry Way. To build upon these efforts, the PDP will continue to initiate a range of programs and installations that enliven Downtown.
Video: Downtown Public Art
Current Projects
Joshua Challen Ice
Aurora V2, 2026
441 Smithfield St.
polycarbonate, LED lights, fans, 2×4 frame
A vertical extension of Aurora, this installation reorients the previous work into an upright structure where light and color gather, shifting in response to movement and air. Suspended elements catch and scatter illumination, turning the surface into a living gradient that changes with the environment. The piece transforms ambient conditions into a continuously unfolding display of color, shifting with the rotation of each panel.
Light Work (Night Shift), 2026
441 Smithfield St.
reclaimed windows, reclaimed neon, LED lights, TV’s
Constructed from reclaimed windows and neon, Light Work (Night Shift) reframes the city as a surface of reflection and return. Passing buses and street lights activate the piece, scattering fragments of color and motion across its layered planes. The work captures the city’s light as labor – circulating, repeating, and never fully at rest.
Ian Brill
Periphery, 2026
344 Fifth Ave.
Periphery explores how our perception shifts when familiar forms begin to behave in unfamiliar ways. What starts as traditional two-dimensional media gradually moves away from the center of attention, becoming something more ambient, more fleeting- something sensed rather than directly seen.
The work invites viewers to notice how meaning changes when images are no longer fixed or central, but instead exist at the edges of awareness.At its core, Periphery is about perceptual change- how we experience, process, and interpret visual information when it resists staying still. It creates a space where attention is fluid, and where the boundaries between foreground and background begin to blur.
Broadcast, 2026
344 Fifth Ave.
Broadcast is inspired by a familiar moment: playing with blocks alongside my 15-month-old daughter. At a certain point, you realize there’s only so much you can demonstrate before stepping back and allowing imagination to take over.
Balancing between direction and openness, the work explores the simultaneous emergence and collapse of form and expectation. Through these iterations of related architectural elements, a digital language is “broadcast” across the installation.
At its core, Broadcast is about collective contribution. Just as individual gestures and small actions, repeated over time, shape a shared experience, the work reflects how communities function: as interconnected, evolving systems.
Owen Lowery
The Worlds of Windows Window Shop for Window Shopping, 2026
Century Building, 124 7th St.
The Worlds of Windows Window Shop for Window Shopping is a playful interactive installation presenting a cheeky multiverse of surreal worlds* ripe for exploration. Several windows respond to human motion with light, sound, animation, and theme. The more you explore, the more you uncover. The more you uncover, the more you change.
* No worlds were apocalypsed in the making of this multiverse art
i/thee
For Seasons, 2026
6th St. & Liberty Ave. Garage
For Seasons is an interactive installation composed of 3D-printed lamps and patterned window decals made from thermochromic vinyl that shifts color in response to temperature changes induced by the environmental conditions, human touch, and pulsing light. Combining heat- and cold-activated materials, the work gradates between blue and purple across the seasons: in deep winter it appears fully purple; on a hot summer day, fully blue; and on temperate days, it settles into a responsive blue-purple rhythm that reacts to touch, like drawing on a fogged window.
The installation visualizes the slow rhythms of the natural environment in contrast to the bustle of downtown Pittsburgh – not as a digital simulation, but as a passively responsive surface attuned to its surroundings. As the work shifts over time, it encourages repeated viewings, changing with the hour, season, and proximity of the body, aming each visit unique. For Seasons invites visitors to engage, touch, and participate in its continual formation – a dedication to the changing seasons.
Seth Clark
Shaping Home, 2026
Heinz 57 Building, 339 Sixth Ave.
Through an ongoing inquiry into the meaning of home, Clark introduces three sculptures as an imaginative entry point, encouraging viewers to rethink how we relate to our neighbors and shape communities.
Brian Gonella
The Point Awakens, 2026
635 Smithfield St.
Atiya Jones
Beam Me Up, 2026
333 Blvd of the Allies & 330 Third Ave.
Gregg Valley
10th Street Bridge, 2020
Ft. Duquesne Bridge, 2017
950 Penn Ave.
Morgan Overton
Oracle of the Unlost Heart, 2025
Landweavers, 2026
To Rise Again, 2025
921 Penn Ave.
Alyson Lush
Crested Guinea Fowl, 2024
Pea Hen, 2024
Turkey Vulture, 2024
908 Penn Ave.
henny / Lauren Henderson
Everybody’s Looking At Me, 2025
907 Penn Ave.
Jamie Earnest
Goodbye Sweet House Guest, 2019
905 Penn Ave.
Juliandra Jones
Pink Lemonade, 2021
Natural Body, 2021
R&R, 2021
526 Penn Ave.
Ifeoma
Welcome To My World, 2023
Inner Vision, 2024
965 Liberty Ave.
Hannah Colen
My Heart is Red like a Sagwa (1), 2024
929 Liberty Ave.
“‘My Heart is Red like a Sagwa’ is an ongoing photography series exploring Asian American girlhood through softness, joy, and imagination.
Set in both natural and intimate spaces, these photographs blend historical folklore, play, and surreal gestures to reflect cycles of vulnerability, desire, and self-protection.
My work centers resilience and joy as radical, embodied practices, pushing back against stereotyped narratives of silence or fragility. Through vivid shades of red, this series invites viewers into a world where tenderness and power coexist, and where AAPI girls and women emerge as a site of transformation and possibility.”
Monica Cervone McElwain
Curiosity Animal: Harriot the Hen, 2022
Morphfly, 2019
A nod to the blue-footed booby, 2020
647 Smithfield St.
Darrin Milliner
PGH Wave Pool, 2025
647 Smithfield St.
Emily Armstrong
Freedom, 2025
Fluid (30), 2025
Fluid (31), 2025
608 Wood St.
“The artwork is intended to serve as a calming, colorful, and inspirational visual experience for travelers—one that reflects both the natural environment and the diverse communities that define the city of Pittsburgh.
This installation will feature a neutral background layered with a flowing spectrum of bright, slightly saturated rainbow colors. These fluid lines are not purely decorative; they symbolize the ebbs and flows of life, the winding road of the human experience, and the emotional movement that comes with transition and travel.
For me personally, this work highlights the experience of navigating the world as a queer person—finding beauty, momentum, and resilience in constant motion.
Integrated into the flowing color field will be illustrations of five birds, each chosen for their connection to Pittsburgh and their symbolic meaning: Northern Cardinal, House Sparrow, Mourning Dove, Dark-eyed Junco. These four birds represent the everyday wildlife of Pittsburgh—familiar, resilient, and diverse. At the center of the composition will be the American Goldfinch, symbolically elevated within the piece. The goldfinch represents Pittsburgh’s iconic black and gold identity, recognized worldwide through the city’s sports teams, culture, and pride.”
Iggy Lopez
KABOOM (Orange), 2022
304 Forbes Ave.
Kirsten Ervin
Here, 2025
Time Traveler, 2025
Batman Bola, 2025
410 Forbes Ave.
Jameelah Platt
Send Me in Tiffany, 2021
Gallery 1, 2021
240 Fourth Ave.
La Vispera
Plastisphere: A Sinking Reality, 2025
Heinz 57 Center
Plastisphere: A Sinking Reality is the latest work of La Vispera, an artist collective formed by Kelly Jimenez and Alejandro Franco. This striking display uses discarded single-use plastics to raise awareness about the impacts of these unsustainable materials on the ecosystem.
Clear Story
Shadow Gallery, 2024
Coffey Way
With support from the PDP’s Uncommon & Curated Fund and a grant provided by the Colcom Foundation, the Shadow Gallery was created by Pittsburgh-based lighting design and production firm Clear Story, and is now operational in the evening hours.
“The installation creates an experiential conversation between the patterns of light projection across the surfaces of Coffey Way and the images contained within the lightboxes,” said Rob Long, Principal and Design Director of Clear Story, a Pittsburgh-based design and consulting firm.
Carolina Loyola-Garcia
Elemental, 2024
6th & Liberty Ave. Garage
Elemental is a site-specific multi-channel video installation designed to showcase a loop of nature videos depicting the ocean, an active erupting volcano, snow, wind, sunsets, clouds, and flora. The alternating footage of nature provides passersby a moment to wonder and a window into worlds far from the downtown business atmosphere. It is meant to serve as a moment of respite or as an invitation to a few minutes of meditation or solace. Read artist statement.
Charlese Dawson
Emerging Visions 2.0 – “Send My Love to the Hill,” 2024
Seventh Ave & William Penn Place
Charlese Dawson’s “Send My Love to the Hill” is a love letter to the neighborhood where she grew up, connecting the past and present of both The Hill and her own experiences to imagine the future. Complemented by poet Jhordan Price near the corner of Seventh Ave and William Penn Place, Dawson’s work invites pedestrians and drivers to pause in their commutes and journeys to contemplate the life and joys of residents of the Hill District today.
Paint The Town Purple, 2024
by Babesburgh
Mellon Square
Babesburgh is proud to launch Paint the Town Purple, a new public art exhibition funded by the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership’s Placemaking Grant. Paint the Town Purple offers passersby a chance to see a visual, historical representation of 16 important women in Pittsburgh as imagined and illustrated by four Pittsburgh-based female artists. These incredible, colorful illustrations will be on display along Smithfield Street, at Mellon Square Park.
Rigel Richardson
Market Square Moment: Good Service, 2024
Produced by the PDP, Market Square Moment is a new platform to showcase large-scale art on a 20-by-50-foot frame on the building facade of 8 Market Square, home to Pizzaiolo Primo, towering above the intersection of Market Square and Forbes Ave. This platform will allow for a new, original work of art to be selected for the display on a regular basis.
For the inaugural installation, a regional call for artists was conducted by Shiftworks, leading the selection of a painting by Pittsburgh-based Mexican American artist Rigel Richardson titled Good Service, a work inspired by the nature found in backyards and gardens in Millvale.
Do What We Love
Planting Seeds: Taking Steps, 2023
Forbes Ave & Fifth Ave. @ Smithfield St.
The vibrant murals adorning the Frank & Seder Building at 441 Smithfield Street beautifully encapsulate nature’s tranquility and the bustling cityscape, adding a burst of color to a prominent corner of Downtown. They are part of the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership’s Great Route Project, a transformative initiative aimed at enhancing the pedestrian experience in Downtown Pittsburgh.
Phil Seth
Pittsburgh Postcard, 2022
6th Street & Liberty Ave. Garage
Designed and painted by Pittsburgh native Phil Seth, this mural was created as part of efforts to enhance 6th Street as a destination dining corridor in the heart of Downtown’s Cultural District. This work is made possible with the generous support of the Benter Foundation.
Max Gonzales & Shane Pilster
and students from Pittsburgh CAPA
Rainbow Road, 2022
Strawberry Way
This new 440-foot long street mural has transformed Downtown’s Strawberry Way into a vibrant work of public art created by students of Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts.
Andrea Polli
Garrison Canal, 2018
Garrison Street
If you were disappointed to see the beautiful lighted artwork, Energy Flow, disappear from the Rachel Carson Bridge, you will be happy to learn that lighted elements of the original artwork have been re-used to create a dynamic new piece: Garrison Canal. Andrea Polli, who created the original work, has created the new light work which turns the Garrison Place alleyway into an imaginary underwater future world of big data.
Public Art Map
Archive Projects
Click HERE for our Public Art Archives Page.
Walking Tours & Publications
Thanks to our friends at the Office of Public Art and Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council, you can download free self-guided walking tours and a variety of publications detailing even more public art on display in and around Downtown. Visit their website.
Contact Us
412-566-4190
Email Us
Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership
The Bank Tower
307 Fourth Avenue – Floor 2
Pittsburgh, PA 15222