When Lexi Bishop moved from Los Angeles to Pittsburgh in 2020, these were the conundrums before her. After working for Nino Mir in Los Angeles and Christie’s in New York City, Bishop decided to open a new art space — Gallery Here — on Pittsburgh’s North Side. Promoting exhibitions and coordinating with fellow gallerists in the city was difficult, because the city lacked the artistic communications infrastructure that would foster her career in major metro markets.
After closing her gallery in 2024, Bishop turned her attention toward building the infrastructure she needed. The result is Middle node— a region-focused gallery guide and arts publication launched in early May that aims to make artists and galleries visible in a handful of Rust Belt cities — Buffalo, Cleveland, and Detroit — as well as Pittsburgh. It differentiates itself, in part, by being open to partnering with art spaces and projects of any kind: from commercial galleries to DIY spaces, pop-ups and events.
Nicole Capozzi of BoxHeart Gallery in Pittsburgh sees this approach as a result of Bishop’s independent stance. “It matters who builds these platforms because it shapes what is recognized as part of the ecosystem in the first place,” she explains. “Pittsburgh had institutional maps and guides before, but autonomous infrastructure existed outside of those frameworks and was simply not included.”
Capozzi distinguishes between high-status museum institutions and independent infrastructures that provide funding, residencies, and space for artists. Natalie Sweet, CEO of Brew House Arts, also notes this distinction, and hopes Middle Node can draw attention to both, without losing what makes each unique: “Reduced fees for listings, user support, and placing exhibitions from experimental spaces like Bunker Projects alongside listings from commercial spaces like Concept Gallery can help raise awareness without changing what those spaces are at their core.”
Perhaps the biggest challenge is the erosion of the gap between cities. Middle Node places galleries 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,” says Bishop. “There is a tendency for cities to operate in isolation, where artists in one city don’t realize they can show up in the other cities.”
These shared struggles can be a blessing, says Nando Alvarez Pérez, co-founder and co-director of the Buffalo Institute of Contemporary Art, which lists shows on Middle Node. “Artists in places like Buffalo, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland—because of the challenges they have faced over the past 50 years—may not always know exactly where to look to the future, but I think they often carry much less historical baggage and less institutional investment.”
Bill O’Driscoll, former arts editor at Pittsburgh City Paper and current arts and culture correspondent for NPR affiliate WESA, says he’s “seen very little connection between Pittsburgh and those other cities” in his 23 years in the scene. “One time at most. One exception might be the Silvereye Center for Photography’s x-ray scan, a biennial that highlights artists who live and work within 300 miles of Pittsburgh.”
“By giving Pittsburgh audiences a platform to learn about galleries and shows in these other cities, it can help grow connections,” Sweet hopes.
Bishop expects that connecting the cities will require a lot of work. The companion publication to Middle Node, which will be launched under the editorial leadership of Paula Kupfer in the coming months, is part of this effort.
Patrick Totally, a Pittsburgh artist, hopes Bishop and her collaborators will succeed, but they worry that slow progress could push them back into mainstream markets. “The Pittsburgh spaces that are getting the most press coverage right now — like Romance Gallery and April — seem somewhat speculative in nature,” he told the Observer. “I get the impression that these spaces (each operated out of spare rooms or inherited properties) are in a position to return to New York City in diminished form should their Pittsburgh prospects fail.”
(Romance Gallery’s Margaret Cross explains that the gallery started in her living room, not a spare room, and has since moved into rented space. Likewise, April and April, run by Patrick Bova and Lucas Regazzi, occupies a rented storefront.)
Bishop shows no sign of leaving the city, but she admits that her connections in New York City and Los Angeles have given her a certain vibe. She believes museum curators and institution directors were more willing to meet with her because she had credentials they recognized. “My first gallery clients here were mostly people from out of town. It was easier to get coverage and press in New York because I already had contacts there.” She hopes these connections will continue to attract the city’s major art collectors to the city’s mid-sized art galleries. In her experience, artists outside the New York City and Los Angeles bubbles may seem “exotic” to collectors in those “major nodes.”
Alvarez Perez did not have that experience. “I don’t think Buffalo is seen as ‘weird’ as much as it is seen as ‘narrow-minded,’ which, in my personal experience, in talking to artists and arts professionals from New York City and Los Angeles, is kind of an inversion of the actual situation,” he tells the Observer. “Much of the broader art world seems stuck in an intellectual time loop.”
Tara Faye Coleman, a Pittsburgh performance artist who showed at Bishop Gallery in 2023, hasn’t always found the “weird” label helpful. “I’ve seen Pittsburgh referred to as a hidden gem, but the way it’s presented still limits the visibility of a lot of artists and groups doing great things because they’re not connected to some of the more well-known institutions,” she says.
It remains to be seen whether Bishop’s connections to the elite will benefit local artists, but even those skeptical find reason for hope. “Bishop was very easy to work with,” Totally adds.
Coleman points out that just the middle knot can address some of the issues that Pittsburgh performers face. She explains that the city lacks an audience for non-theatrical performances. “They expect staging, choreography, rehearsal, movement, and when the work is more conceptual, people don’t always know how to read it. The lack of knowledge about performance is a real barrier.”
For photographer Sinta Schumacher, there’s also the question of why there isn’t a large collector base in Pittsburgh, and why it’s necessary to attract collectors from elsewhere: “I think there are enough people with means to support a healthy collecting community, but for one reason or another, a lot of people don’t see art as something worth spending more than a few hundred dollars on.”
By contrast, Ren Howison, who has been showing in Pittsburgh for more than two decades, sees New York City collectors as an untapped market. “Last summer, one of my paintings arrived in New York City for the first time,” they told the Observer. “This acquisition was a major milestone.”
Although the “middle node” may reshape the fortunes of Rust Belt artists, the platform cannot be a solution to all the economic and cultural realities of art-making in a mid-sized city. However, Schumacher sees the Middle Knot as solving many of the problems she and Bishop faced when they moved here: “Having clear access to all the art spaces throughout the city eliminates a certain kind of cultural censorship, and I think that’s especially helpful for young artists or people new to the scene. I would have loved something like this when I first moved to the city.”
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