When Read Peshkopi moved to Pittsburgh from Los Angeles in 2020, these were the mysteries before her. After working for Nino Mier in LA and Christie’s in New York City, Bishop had decided to open a new art space-here gallery– on the north side of Pittsburgh. However, promoting exhibitions and coordinating with fellow gallerists in the city was challenging because the city lacked the art communication infrastructure that had fueled her career in major metro markets.
After closing her gallery in 2024, Bishop turned her attention to building the infrastructure she needed. The result is The middle node—a regionally focused gallery guide and art publication that launched in early May and aims to make artists and galleries visible in a cluster of Rust Belt cities—Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit—as well as Pittsburgh. It stands out, in part, by being open to partnering with art spaces and projects of all kinds: from commercial galleries to DIY spaces, pop-ups and events.
Nicole Capozzi of Pittsburgh BoxHeart Gallery sees this approach as a result of the Bishop’s independent position. “It matters who builds these platforms because it shapes what is known as part of the ecosystem in the first place,” she explains. “Pittsburgh has had institutional maps and guides before, but the independent infrastructure exists outside of those frameworks and just hasn’t been included.”
Capozzi distinguishes between high-prestige museum-type institutions and the independent infrastructure that provides funding, residencies and space for artists. It’s a difference Natalie Sweetexecutive director of Brew House Arts, has also observed, and she hopes Middle Node can draw attention to both, without losing what makes each unique: “Reduced listing fees, user support, and exhibit placement from experiential spaces like Bunker projects along with listings from commercial spaces like Concept Galleryit can help raise awareness without changing what those spaces are at their core.”
More challenging, perhaps, is the erosion of the divide between cities. Middle Node places exhibitions in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit, and Buffalo next to each other, as an incentive for artists and art writers to think of those cities as interconnected. “These cities share similar struggles and similar infrastructure. There’s a tendency for cities to work in isolation from one another, with artists in one of those cities not even realizing they can show up in the others,” says Bishop.
Those shared struggles can be a help, an offer Nando Alvarez-Perezco-founder and co-director of the Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art, which is listing shows at Middle Node. “Artists in places like Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cleveland—because of the challenges they’ve faced over the last fifty years—may not always know exactly where to look for the future, but I think they often carry much less historical baggage and less institutional investment.”
Bill O’Driscollformer arts editor for the Pittsburgh City Paper and current arts and culture reporter for NPR affiliate WESA, says he’s “seen very little connection between Pittsburgh and those other cities,” in his 23 years on the scene. “Once at most. The only exception might be the Silver Eye Center for Photography’s Radial Survey, a biennial that highlights artists who live and work within 300 miles of Pittsburgh.”
Sweet hopes that “giving Pittsburgh audiences a platform to learn about galleries and shows in these other cities can help foster connections.”
The bishop predicts that connecting the cities will require work. Companion publication to Middle Node, which will launch under the editorial leadership of Paula Kupfer in the coming months, is part of this effort.
Patrick Completelyan artist in Pittsburgh, hopes Bishop and her collaborators succeed, but worries that slow progress could prompt their return to mainstream markets. “The Pittsburgh spaces that are getting the most press right now—like Gallery of Romances AND april april“Feel somewhat speculative in nature,” he tells the Observer. “My impression is that these spaces (each operating out of spare rooms or legacy properties) are positioned to return to New York City in a scaled-down form if their prospects in Pittsburgh decline.”
(Margaret Cross of Romance Gallery clarifies that the gallery started in her living room, not a spare room, and has since moved to a rented space. Likewise, April April, directed by Patrick Bova AND Lucas Regazzioccupies a rented storefront.)
Bishop shows no sign of leaving town, but admits her connections in New York and Los Angeles have given her a loan. Museum curators and foundation administrators have been more willing to meet with her because she has the credentials they recognize, she suspects. “My first clients at the gallery here were mostly people from out of town. It was easier to get coverage and press in New York because I already had connections there.” Those connections, she hopes, will continue to attract big-city collectors to mid-sized city galleries. In her experience, artists outside of the NYC and LA bubbles can seem “exotic” to collectors in those “main hubs.”
Alvarez-Perez hasn’t had that experience. “I don’t think Buffalo is seen as ‘exotic’ as much as it is seen as ‘parochial,’ which, in my personal experience talking to artists and art professionals from New York City and Los Angeles, is kind of the inversion of the current situation,” he tells the Observer. “It seems that much of the greater art world is stuck in an intellectual time loop.”
Tara Fay Colemana Pittsburgh performance artist who showed at Bishop’s gallery in 2023 hasn’t always found the label “exotic” helpful. “I’ve seen Pittsburgh touted as a kind of hidden gem,” she says, “but the way it’s profiled still limits visibility for a lot of artists and collectives that are doing great things because they’re not connected to some of the more established institutions.”
Whether or not Bishop’s elite connections will benefit local artists remains to be seen, but even skeptics find reason to hope. “Bishop has been extremely easy to work with,” adds Totally.
Coleman points out that Middle Node can only address some of the issues facing performance artists in Pittsburgh. The city, she explains, lacks an audience for non-theatrical performance work. “They expect staging and choreography and rehearsal and movement, and when the work is more conceptual, people don’t always know how to read it. The lack of literacy around performance is a real barrier.”
ABOUT Centa Schumachera photographer, there’s also the question of why Pittsburgh doesn’t have much of its own collector base and why it’s necessary to attract collectors from elsewhere: “I think there are enough people with the means to support a healthy collecting community, but for one reason or another, so many people don’t see art as something worth throwing more than a couple of hundred bucks at.”
In contrast, Wren Howisonwho has shown work in Pittsburgh for more than two decades, sees NYC collectors as an untapped market. “Last summer, one of my paintings made it to New York City for the first time,” they told the Observer. “This acquisition was a major milestone.”
While Middle Node may reshape the fortunes of Rust Belt artists, the platform cannot be a solution to all the economic and cultural realities of making art in a middle-sized city. Still, Schumacher sees Middle Node as solving many of the problems she and Bishop encountered when they moved here: “Having clear access to all the art spaces throughout the city eliminates a certain kind of cultural preservation, and I think that’s especially helpful for new artists or people new to the scene. I would have wanted something like this when I first moved to the city.”
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