Allegheny County launches 1st-of-a-kind free audio tours at Hartwood Acres sculpture garden

Visitors to Hartwood Acres can pop in their headphones to hear highlights of Pittsburgh’s industrial legacy while taking in the park’s impressive sculpture garden.

It’s part of a mission to provide more people access to world-class art.

Allegheny County on Thursday launched a new initiative to offer free, self-guided audio tours of the $5 million Carol R. Brown Sculpture Garden. It features a dozen large-scale pieces of art first gifted to the park in the mid-1980s.

The audio tour program is the first of its kind in any of the nine county parks.

Details are accessible by QR code at each stop, on a brochure or through the website acparks foundation.org/projects/sculpture-garden.

County Executive Sara Innamorato said the audio tours are a “fabulous addition” to Hartwood Acres.

“This is a celebration of public art, accessibility and the power of storytelling,” Innamorato said. “It brings new life to the Carol R. Brown Sculpture Garden, offering residents and visitors a free and immersive way to experience the beauty of our parks.

“As we continue to invest in Allegheny County’s natural and cultural assets, projects like this demonstrate how we can honor our past, inspire curiosity and make our parks more welcoming for everyone.”

Commissioned by the nonprofit Allegheny County Parks Foundation, in partnership with the county, the audio tours were developed by students at the University of Pittsburgh under the guidance of Shiftworks Community + Public Arts.

The project was paid for by the Richard King Mellon Foundation.

“This audio tour brings a new depth of knowledge and understanding to this incredible collection,” said Joey-Linn Ulrich, executive director of the Allegheny County Parks Foundation.

“By making it free and easy to access, we’re inviting more people to experience world-class public art, beautifully intermixed with nature, right here in our county parks.”

Hartwood Acres is a 629-acre park that straddles Indiana Township and Hampton. More than 1.8 million people visit the park each year.

Thursday’s event was held inside the park’s 1929 Tudor mansion that anchors the garden, the pieces of which were originally acquired through a program by Carol R. Brown, former director of the county’s Bureau of Cultural Programs.

Brown moved to Pittsburgh in 1959 to teach at Chatham College (now Chatham University). In the late 1970s and ’80s, in her role with the county, Brown worked with the Carnegie Museum of Art to bring art pieces by renowned national and international artists to the park. Later, she helped to envision the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, serving as its first president and CEO and spearheading the transformation of a Downtown corridor into the city’s cultural epicenter.

In the sculpture garden at Hartwood, works by Tillie Speyer and Lila Katzen are joined by those from Betty Gold, Jack Youngerman, Ron Bennett and Lyman Kipp, among others.

Notably, the garden features four women sculptors, including three who worked in steel.

A piece by David von Schlegell was acquired in 2017. In 2022, Wilkinsburg artist Dee Briggs was commissioned to create a new piece.

Her work complemented a years-long project to refurbish and relocate the sculptures that previously dotted the park’s landscape.

Clustering the artwork along a path gives visitors a better sense of their grandeur, officials said.

“I love Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, the county parks — especially Hartwood Acres — and the arts,” Brown said in a statement. “Nothing could please me more than to see the Hartwood Acres Sculpture Park continue to thrive with excellent sculptures in a wonderful setting.”