The International Sculpture Center finds new home in Pittsburgh

A long-running worldwide advocacy group for sculpture now makes its home in Pittsburgh.

The International Sculpture Center, which boasts 4,000 members in 40 countries, began relocating from New Jersey last year. It holds the grand opening of its new headquarters and gallery, in Lawrenceville, with a free celebration Thursday, Nov. 6.

The ISC hosts an annual conference and publishes the full-color magazine Sculpture six times each year. While the nonprofit group was founded in 1960, the new gallery, called simply the ISC Gallery, is the first ever for the group.

“It’s exciting and new for us and gives us a lot of visibility that we didn’t have before, and so we’re delighted,” said longtime executive director Johannah Hutchison.

International Sculpture Center

The Nov. 6 event will double as the closing for the gallery’s first show, an exhibit of fiber-based work punningly titled “SOFT Launch.” There’ll also be a preview of its forthcoming project Welcome Blanket, which draws on the local fiber-arts community to create blankets to be given to immigrants and refugees as a display of “unity and welcome.”

ISC was founded at the University of Kansas primarily as a resource for sculptors who did metal-casting. It later expanded its mission to one of support for artists, patrons, writers, educators and anyone else in the world of contemporary sculpture. Perhaps its best-known product is the magazine, first published in 1979. Hutchison said the ISC prints 20,000 copies of each issue.

Hutchison said she began looking more closely at Pittsburgh after the group hosted its 2016 annual conference here. She spent a couple of years visiting and making connections.

“I just fell in love with it. And I fell in love with the people, and I said, ‘Oh, if we could ever move the organization, this is where we should be,’” she said. “This is like a vibrant hub. It’s affordable for artists. This is what our organization is about.”

The post-pandemic world seemed a good time to reimagine the group’s future, she said. The two-story building at 5126 Butler St. includes a spacious storefront gallery and offices. ISC has a staff of 12, many of whom work remotely.

The ISC plans to team with local organizations on exhibits and other projects in the gallery.

“The idea of using that space is, it will be a dialogue between Pittsburgh artists and international artists,” Hutchison said.

The ISC’s first project in Pittsburgh was a 2024 juried show of sculpture by international students in a former Burlington Coat Factory space Downtown, organized with the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership and McKnight Realty.

“SOFT Launch” was a collaboration with the Fiberarts Guild of Pittsburgh, Contemporary Craft and Brew House Arts, in conjunction with Fiberart International 2025. The juried show features artists from around the nation and from Pittsburgh, including Cheryl Capezzuti (best known in these parts for her giant puppets, including those in Downtown’s First Night parade).

The next exhibit in the ISC Gallery, set to open in December, is Welcome Blanket, the Pittsburgh version of a project created in 2017 by Los Angeles-based architect Jayna Zweiman as a way to connect U.S. residents with newcomers to the country. Earlier iterations of the project have gotten exhibitions in museums and galleries around the country, and at Los Angeles International Airport.

In Pittsburgh, the ISC and groups including the Fiber Guild, Contemporary Craft, Pittsburgh Botanic Garden, Protohaven, the Knit Pitt Yarn Club and the Waldorf School of Pittsburgh collaborated to find artists to contribute handcrafted 40-inch-by-40-inch blankets. Each blanket will include a paper tag on which the maker can write a brief “story meaningful to my family’s history about immigration, migration, and/or relocation.”

After the exhibit concludes in March, the blankets will be given to immigrants and refugees through partners Hello Neighbor and Jewish Family and Community Services of Pittsburgh.

“People arrive, they get something, they’re cared about,” Hutchison said. “And the idea is that as we’re working together, making these blankets …. we talk about our own story of how we came here, or how our families came here. … In sharing that narrative, we realize that we all came here and that we should welcome new people.”