Bars of colored lights now trace the outlines and suggest the levels of the distinctive, sail-like façade of Pittsburgh’s August Wilson African American Cultural Center.

The new work, titled “Give Light to the Whole Circumference,” is by Pittsburgh’s Rainbow Serpent Collective, and it’s more than eye candy for passersby on Liberty Avenue.

The artists say the piece, which officially premieres with a celebration at the Center on Thursday night, was designed to communicate key themes from two plays by the building’s Pulitzer Prize-winning namesake.

And Center president and CEO Janis Burley said the light installation also highlights the landmark center’s distinctive design, by architect Allison Williams, just in time for the 17th anniversary of the day it opened to the public, Sept. 17, 2009.

‘A luminous vessel’

It was with that anniversary in mind that Burley contacted Rainbow Serpent, which consists of Marques Redd and Mikael Owunna, whose other big architectural light installation here illuminated Downtown’s “Three Sisters” bridges in 2024.

Redd and Owunna immersed themselves in Wilson’s plays.

“We started weaving together a lot of ideas and started thinking about how we could turn the building itself into a storyteller,” Redd said.

One of the two programmed 10-minute displays was inspired by “Gem of the Ocean,” Wilson’s Century Cycle play set in the Hill District in 1904. It’s titled “Sail the Road of Heaven,” and it’s meant to turn the Center into “a luminous vessel journeying through the waters of memory” toward the City of Bones, the mythical place of ancestry conjured by Wilson’s iconic character Aunt Ester, according to press materials.

The second display, “Coming and Going,” is inspired by Wilson’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” in which the drifter and seeker Herald Loomis takes a journey toward self-realization. That display, said Redd, is “asking how does a person who’s been fragmented become whole enough to stand again?”

A third 10-minute slot is reserved for unique light displays marking community celebrations like Juneteenth, Pride, big sporting events and even the Center’s Pittsburgh International Jazz Festival, whose 2026 incarnation is also this week.

Technical and systems support for “Give Light” was provided by SPRK.

Redd and Owunna have an abiding interest in traditional African cosmologies, and Redd said they realized Wilson shared a similar concern with ancestry, memory, spiritual journeys, the return of the past and transformation.

Owunna said they drew the title “Give Light to the Whole Circumference” from an ancient Egyptian funerary text.

“We were thinking of the philosophy of what a cultural center can do,” said Owunna, and the way its influence can extend beyond the walls of the building and into the surrounding city. “If this is a cultural center, what is its circumference?”

‘A glow to that corner’

“Give Light” was funded by the Henry L. Hillman Foundation and the Allegheny Regional Asset District, with support from the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership.

It actually constitutes the first of two phases of lighting for the building’s façade. Fundraising has begun for phase two, but no date is set for its completion, Redd said.

Thurday’s opening event, Lights ON Liberty, begins with a free reception inside the Center and includes the 9 p.m. lighting.

The Center’s Burley said she hopes the new installation will encourage other building owners on Liberty to illuminate the street, which tends to be underlit.

“Give Light” thus has practical as well as aesthetic value.

“It just gives a glow to that corner when the lights are on,” she said.