The Last Billboard

The Last Billboard was a public art billboard curated by Jon Rubin in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Located at the intersection of Highland Avenue and Baum Boulevard in the East Liberty neighborhood, above what was originally the building for Waffle Shop: A Reality Show—a restaurant that was also conceptualized by Rubin—the art piece consisted of a 12-feet-by-36-feet steel frame billboard on which letters were arranged by hand. Each month, different artists were solicited to place a message on the billboard.

Controversy
In March 2018, The Last Billboard's landlord, We Do Property, in response to complaints from community members who felt the sign was racist, removed Alisha Wormsley's text from the billboard. Jon Rubin, the billboard's founder and creator, responded in a statement in response to the removal:"I believe in the power, poetry, and relevance of Alisha’s text and see absolutely no reason it should have been taken down. I find it tragically ironic, given East Liberty’s history and recent gentrification, that a text by an African American artist affirming a place in the future for black people is seen as unacceptable in the present."

A public panel discussion about the text and its removal was hosted by the Kelly Strayhorn Theater in April or May 2018.

In April of 2018, The Last Billboard was removed.

Early billboard messages
From mid-2009 to late 2012, while Waffle Shop was still operating, the billboard included content proposed and submitted by artists and regular people. Unlike the version of the billboard from 2013 onward, this early version switched out messages several times a month. Below is an in-depth, but not comprehensive, list of those messages.