Doug Cooper: Knowing & Seeing the River City

On View in the McKenna Gallery

Pittsburgh-based muralist Doug Cooper responds to works of art in the Museum’s Scenes of Industry collection. His work will be interspersed with the permanent collection to further tell the story of the Big Steel Era in Pittsburgh and the surrounding region.

This is the first time that the McKenna Gallery has been utilized in this way, offering visitors a fresh look at and interpretation of The Westmoreland’s permanent collection with the work of a contemporary artist. It is being done in preparation for a complete reinstallation of the gallery and reinterpretation of these southwestern Pennsylvania collections by an outside scholar.

Interested in learning more about Cooper and his long career as a muralist in Pittsburgh and in various cities around the world? Listen to an interview Cooper did with WESA’s Bill Driscoll in 2019 or purchase his mesmerizing book, Knowing & Seeing: Reflections of Fifty Years of Drawing Cities, that’s part memoir and part an examination of his art, from the Museum Shop!