Emily Fritz and Emily Hoffman | A&E Editor and Staff Writer
Disembarking from the North Side T-station, visitors are met with the harsh overpass of the highway and a vast desert of parking lots, drawing attention away from scattered venues such as PNC Park, Acrisure Stadium or Stage AE.
The Warhol Museum, just half of a mile away from the light rail station, is moving into the next phase of their 10-year development project called The Pop District.
The goal of The Pop District is to transform the five-block radius around the museum into an inviting third space, rich with green areas and free offerings.
‘Final Fridays,’ a summer event occurring on the last Friday of each month, is an attempt by The Warhol Museum to expand its reach horizontally. To set the scene for guests, the event included a live DJ, outdoor lighting and a rainbow mural backdrop, completed in 2021 by artist Typoe.
The event has attracted a diverse crowd since its first season in 2021, from business people to city creatives, allowing ‘Final Fridays’ to open opportunities for networking and collaboration.
“So if someone’s coming out of the museum or just walking across the bridge to go to a baseball game, they can say, ‘Oh, wait. I can come into this thing,’” explained Byron Nash, Community Engagement & Events Coordinator at The Pop District, “and then they end up networking, meeting a lot of people that they probably wouldn’t meet.”
As it stands currently, the North Shore is devoid of many multi-experience opportunities.
Former Carnegie Museum member Disa Weinheimer brought her family to The Warhol on Friday to enjoy the outdoor space and the El Sabor Latin Kitchen food truck while they entertained friends from out-of-town.
Weinheimer told The Duke that her family visits other Pittsburgh neighborhoods more frequently, such as Lawrenceville or The Strip.
“On the North Shore, it’s just food, or just the parks, the stadiums, [the] bars,” she said. “If you’re going there for restaurants or you’re going there for an event, great. But otherwise, … we wouldn’t go down there.”
Now, with the expansion of The Warhol’s Pop District, Weinheimer’s family is less reluctant to return.
“We kind of worked to make [Silver Street] more pedestrian friendly, and pedestrian only. We obviously painted it silver, referencing Warhol in the 60s and [Warhol’s] ‘Silver Factory,’” said Senior Director of Performing Arts and Programming Ben Harrison.
During the final installment of ‘Final Fridays’ on Aug. 30, the event had to move into the museum’s lobby area to accommodate rainy weather. Weinheimer said that their party did not originally intend to explore The Warhol, but that her family felt more drawn to explore once inside.
The Weinheimer family weren’t the only people who gravitated to Warhol history during the ‘Final Friday’ event. DJ Alex Rivera, who had never been to the Warhol Museum before, watched a 4-hour documentary about Warhol to prepare for his set.
“The main thing that stuck with me was there was this one quote where [Warhol] said, ‘Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it.’ So I took that into my preparation for The Warhol.”
Rivera decided to play one of his favorite songs, “Astral Plane” by Flying Lotus, which consists of muted vocals and a unique instrumentation. “I think Andy Warhol himself would have been impressed.”
Similarly, museum employee and fellowship mentor Sarah Schuck said that she has found artistic freedom at The Warhol, dotingly referring to the deceased artist as “Uncle Andy.”
In The Pop District, opportunities exist in the form of a creative fellowship, youth workforce, an accredited digital marketing diploma and workshops.
Although ‘Final Fridays’ has reached the end of its 2024 run, The Warhol will continue to offer future events in the museum and the surrounding Pop District. The next installment of the “Sound Series,” an initiative created by Harrison during his 20 year tenure, will take place on Oct. 14 with guitarist Jake Xerxes Fussell.
Harrison explained that the offerings at The Warhol create a “cross pollination” of the arts, describing the programming as “this extension of the museum … making it perhaps even more accessible.”