Agnes R. Katz Plaza, Pittsburgh, Besucherguide & was in der Nähe unternehmen

Agnes R. Katz Plaza is a small public plaza on Penn Avenue in the Cultural District of downtown Pittsburgh, better known to locals as "Eyeball Park". It pairs landscape design by Dan Kiley with sculpture by Louise Bourgeois, two major artists working together. It is an easy, free stop for anyone walking through the district.

The story behind it

The plaza was installed in 1999 and named for the mother of Marshall Katz, a Pittsburgh Cultural Trust board member. She was a patron of the local arts. The Trust itself began in 1984, growing out of the downtown revival that Henry John Heinz II had started with Heinz Hall. Over time it shaped a fourteen-block Cultural District of theaters, galleries and public spaces, and this plaza is one of them.

The Trust brought in two big names. Dan Kiley, who also designed the landscape around the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, handled the landscape, and sculptor Louise Bourgeois provided the art. Both were in the last years of long careers and both had died by 2011. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette described the result as a dialogue between their opposite approaches, the rational and the intuitive.

What to look for

• The eye-shaped sculptures by Louise Bourgeois, which give the plaza its nickname and are the first thing most people notice.
• The contrast between Dan Kiley's carefully ordered landscape and the more instinctive, curving forms of the sculpture, the dialogue the Post-Gazette wrote about.
• How the plaza works as a pause in the busy streets of the Cultural District, with seating where you can sit and look around.
• The surrounding theaters and venues on Penn Avenue, which show how the Cultural Trust turned several blocks into one connected arts district.

Tips for your visit

• It is an outdoor public space, so there is no ticket and no queue. Ten to fifteen minutes is enough to look at the sculptures and sit for a moment.
• Daylight is best for photographing the shapes and the details of the design.
• Combine it with a walk through the rest of the Cultural District, where the theaters and galleries are close together. Check current opening hours and event listings for any venue you want to enter.
• Because it is so compact, it works best as one stop on a longer downtown walk rather than a destination on its own.

See it on a quest

The plaza is one stop on Pittsburgh Historic Downtown, a self-guided quest through the heart of the city. You walk to it as part of a longer route, the app tells you about the place as you arrive, and you solve a puzzle based on what is in front of you. There is no guide to follow and no group to join, and you can start whenever you like. The quest is paid, and one ticket covers the whole group.