University Art Gallery exhibitions depict the legacies of land and labor

American folk hero and original Man of Steel Joe Magarac grins as he bends a molten rod of orange steel while his fellow workers gasp in awe beneath him. Housed in the Frick Fine Arts building, this 1947 painting of Magarac is the centerpiece for one of three new exhibitions presented by the University Art Gallery. 

A Slavic immigrant from Braddock, Magarac stood over seven feet tall according to legend. As Pittsburgh’s most famous folk hero, Magarac represents the ties of immigration and labor to Big Steel and serves as focal point for a new exhibit. 

The three installations, “Joe Magarac Returns,” “Broken Ground” and “Rewilding,” depict the legacies of land and labor in Southwestern Pennsylvania and will be on display until March 21, 2025. “Joe Magarac Returns” and “Broken Ground” started as collection based exhibitions, “drawing from the 3,000-plus works of art that we [the UAG] hold in our collection,” according to director and curator Sylvia Rhor Samaniego.

In addition to the pieces from the UAG collection, several works on display come from partner museums and organizations including Rivers of Steel, Heinz History Center and University Library System. While each installation stands on its own, the three seamlessly come together to tell one story, allowing viewers to reflect on the evolution of land and labor exploitation. 

The “Rewilding” exhibition invites viewers to contemplate how to reclaim nature from decades of industry and consumer culture. Through a seven-channel video installation, Sarah Moore, filmmaker and teaching assistant professor at Pitt, explores this relationship in her footage of rewilded golf courses across the Eastern United States.  

Moore hopes the “Rewilding” exhibit will allow viewers to reflect on both the beauty of nature and the historic damage to the land.

“It’s nice and it’s wonderful to be able to celebrate and enjoy images of the natural world, but it is also important to remember the people who have been forced to toil on the land, the people who have been historically denied access to nature and those who have also willingly excavated and harmed the land throughout the years,” Moore said. 

The practice of rewilding is an approach to conservation that allows nature to take its course with little human intervention. Moore, who lives across from a 150-acre rewilded golf course, uses golf courses as her focus because of their abundance and demand for resources and upkeep. 

“I want to bring awareness to the fact that there are these spaces that are being given back to nature,” Moore said. “These spaces can be rewilded and can still be saved even though they’ve been harmed from so many decades or even centuries.” 

“Rewilding” is housed in the historic rotunda of the UAG, a space that proved to be challenging for displaying the installation due to the building’s architecture. Because of the intricate details of the circular space, “Rewilding” was conceived with the building design in mind and has “become part of the architecture in some ways,” according to Moore. 

“We’re reshaping the space for contemporary audiences, but I always say that sometimes the constraints of a space make you more creative,” Rohr said. 

Apart from Moore’s work with “Rewilding,” the efforts of several students and other artists helped to make all of the exhibits come to life. Rohr credits Alex J. Taylor, academic curator and associate professor in the department of history of art and architecture at Pitt, for his help with the installations. 

Rohr hopes people will connect the works with modern issues that often put Pittsburgh in the spotlight, such as immigration, labor and the environment. 

“All of these ideas are such key issues in general in our society right now, so to use works that are almost 100 years old as well as very contemporary works to engage with. I hope it will be fruitful discussion,” Rohr said.

A discussion of the “Rewilding” exhibit will take place on Oct. 16 at the UAG. Moore and Diana Khoi Nguyen, poet and assistant professor in the English department, will discuss the making of the video installation at the event. 

As the conversation partner for the event, Nguyen hopes to help audience members connect and understand Moore’s work, particularly “with the relationship to ecology and the land, not just in Pittsburgh but also the Rust Belt region.”

Nguyen is friends with Moore and has audited several of her classes including an ecology filmmaking course. Because she is so familiar with Moore’s work, Nguyen aims to help communicate Moore’s process and vision to a general audience. 

An official opening reception of the fall exhibitions was held on Oct. 3 at the UAG.

Paintings of coal miners and steelworkers symbolize the power of human progress, yet they offer new meanings today when considering contemporary concerns such as environmental and social impacts. Once-heroic images now paint a different tale of these industries in the post-industrial Rust Belt.

“I really think this is an exhibition that will speak to so many of our visitors, both students and people from the area,” Rohr said. “I hope it’s going to be an exhibition that allows people to give back, to share their stories and share their experiences but also to think about some of these questions.”