In 2000, Johnny Diaz fled the Dominican Republic and the rampant corruption that hampered his business career. If you needed ...

Gender-flipping classic roles in theater has become so commonplace that it’s now almost de rigueur. What director wants to go to a hipster cocktail party these days and confess that he or she is ...

The first time I visited Pittsburgh for more than a couple of days was Christmas week about 20 years ago. I stayed at the ...

My twin brother, Allan Block, and I are the third generation in a family business that’s more than 100 years old. My grandfather, Paul Block, was an immigrant from East Prussia, and grew up, through ...

It’s a hell of a thing to know your birth coincides with a line of demarcation in your hometown. On one side is prosperity. On the other, ruin. I was born in Youngstown in 1977. At the time, it was an ...

Within days of Allegheny County’s first confirmed case of coronavirus in March, city and county officials moved to shutter nonessential businesses, with their efforts buttressed by stay at home orders ...

Like it or not, the Carnegie International eclipses everything the Carnegie Museum of Art does. Every director has grumbled about how it commandeers all available resources. But it’s a time-honored ...

Robert Young was one of the bad characters in Rosedale, a black neighborhood of Johnstown, after he arrived in 1923. Rumors swirled that he had committed murder in his native state of Alabama. And he ...

The critic Susan Sontag explores this issue perceptively in her seminal 1966 book, Against Interpretation. She examines the problem of morality versus aesthetics through the opposite side of the ...

To celebrate the beginning of our 20th year, we’ve set out to catalogue the contributions that Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania have made to the world. The list has grown and grown, and despite our ...

I was born in Tlemcen, Algeria, a small city on the border with Morocco. My family is Jewish, of Spanish ancestry, and had been in Algeria for centuries. Both sides of my family were poor and ...