Nine Mile Run Viewfinder Amble and Closing Celebration

The Office for Public Art (OPA) is pleased to announce a new series of artist-designed walking tours during the late summer and early fall of 2023. OPA maintains a long-standing history of hosting and organizing walking tours for the public. To further expand this programmatic offering, OPA commissioned four Pittsburgh Creative Corps artists to design and experiment with how tour-goers experience the region’s public realm. The artists for the tours are: Ginger Brooks Takahashi, Erin Mallea, Jason McKoy, and Monica McElwain.

Each tour in the series was conceptualized by the artists and focuses on engaging audience members through artistic practices, participant observations, listening, physical activity, and games.

Nine Mile Run Viewfinder Amble and Closing Celebration

Artist Ginger Brooks Takahashi links the sites of her public artwork Nine Mile Run Viewfinder and connects the underground waterway from Nine Mile Run, to stormwater and sewer systems, the Monongahela River, and the water we drink.

The tour will follow the original flow of Nine Mile Run and identify the current storm sewer path. Using collective knowledge-building as a strategy to shift the hierarchy of knowledge transmission, attendees will be encouraged to contribute observations, stories, and questions to the group. Participants will visit the three sites of Nine Mile Run Viewfinder where Brooks Takahashi will present scores she’s composed, invite discussion at each site, and highlight places that have become significant to her artistic process. The tour will also be a closing celebration for Nine Mile Run Viewfinder, Brooks Takahashi’s public artwork created in 2021 for the Environment, Health, and Public Art Initiative of the Office for Public Art. The tour will conclude with a reception and light refreshments.

About Ginger Brooks Takahashi

Ginger Brooks Takahashi is a transdisciplinary artist and educator. Her performance, installation, and site responsive works examine our relationships to the mediums that connect us. These public projects are platforms for intimate interaction, an extension of feminist and queer praxis. She received her BA from Oberlin College, 1999; and attended the Whitney Independent Study Program, 2007. She has exhibited at institutions including Carnegie Museum of Art, 2020; Oakland Museum of California, 2019; Jewish Museum, 2016; Tensta Konsthall, 2015; Brooklyn Museum, 2013; Museo Tamayo, 2010; New Museum, 2009; amongst others. Most recently, she created a permanent public artwork for Schenley Park in Pittsburgh and a collaboration with Dana Bishop-Root for Counterpublic, St Louis 2023.

Directions and Parking Information

Tour goers will meet at the Braddock Trail Head at Frick Park located near 1400 S. Braddock Avenue at Allenby Avenue in Regent Square where free, public parking is available. As part of the tour, a van will transport attendees from the Braddock Trail Head to Hunter Park in Wilkinsburg to see one of the Nine Mile Run Viewfinder sites.

If taking public transportation there is a stop at Braddock Avenue + Greendale Avenue that serves routes 61B, 71, and P71.

Preparation

Participants should wear comfortable shoes for walking on city streets, as well as sunscreen and hats, and should bring drinking water with them. There is a porta-john available in Hunter Park.