By Gina McKlveen
Standing arm in arm outside Maser Galleries along Walnut Street in Shadyside, the Maser women, Brenda and her two daughters, Katie and Kristen, reminisced to a crowd of family, friends, former athletes, community members, city councilpersons, art lovers, and various spectators about what this business has meant to them since it first opened on September 27, 1974—50 years ago to the day.
Katie applauded her parents, noting that “50 years is huge accomplishment for a business, especially an art business.” She called Walnut Street “an extension of home,” and Kristen expressed similar sentiments, stating that her childhood “orbited around this gallery” and referred to it as her “home base.”

As the story goes, Maser Galleries begins with one man—Ronald Maser, affectionately known as “Lefty”—a Pittsburgh-area native, McKeesport High School graduate, former University of Pittsburgh student-athlete, and multi-talented visionary, whose baseball career aspirations with the Los Angeles Dodgers fell short because of an arm injury that led him to answer a newspaper advertisement promising “unlimited opportunity” with Arts International, which was the biggest chain of galleries in the country back then. According to Lefty, during the Arts International interview, he and the interviewer just talked about baseball. By the end of the interview, the guy pitched him the keys and drove back to Chicago, leaving Lefty to learn the art business on the fly.
Years later, Lefty branched out on his own, founding what is known today as Maser Galleries. The gallery started out at Seven Springs Resort in the Laurel Highlands, east of Pittsburgh. There was already a gallery at the ski resort and the space had become available for a new owner/occupant. Originally, Lefty says, he drove up to Seven Springs to express that he wasn’t interested, but whether it was the drive, the connection with ski and sport, or something else, after he got up there, he changed his mind and said yes. Like many things throughout Lefty’s life, he just went with his gut… and it worked.
Brenda, who grew up at Seven Springs and was working there had an art background, minoring in art, practicing in photography, and dabbling in painting, so when Lefty needed someone to work at his new gallery, Brenda became Lefty’s right-hand woman, so-to-speak.
“My part of business has changed over the years,” Brenda recounts. “I helped Lefty. Lefty was in charge. He made all the decisions.”

But as for Brenda’s part in the business, Kristen surmised, “Mom is the heart. Dad is driving force,” while Brenda refers to herself as “the people person.” She says, “I love people. I love talking about the art, I love being with the art, selling the art. Lefty was the person responsible for the success of that gallery without question. He could sense what people would love, what people would buy. He was not highly trained in art. I mean, he was a math student [at the University of Pittsburgh]. He had a sense of what was beautiful and what people would love to have in their homes.”
She adds, “Buying is the key to any business, and certainly to the art business. He just had a wonderful sense of the best pieces of an artist, he could pick them. I learned from him. I learned everything I know about that from him.”
Brenda’s own art background has, in her words, “worked out beautifully in this gallery.” She remembers, “I had a dark room for a while and did photography and that skill served me very well working in the gallery. There were so many things that needed photographed over the years that it was a really wonderful fit for me.”

Brenda also points out, “Lefty has an art background, too.” While maybe not as well-known as his baseball stats, “When he was a young student, he went to McKeesport High School, which was a huge high school at the time, booming, thriving, and there were only two students picked to take art classes at the Carnegie Museum and he was one of the students who was picked. So, he has some art talent, but he never developed that. But he had art talent, and he always had a love of beauty.”
Even as a baseball player, fans and friends described Lefty as “art in motion.” Brenda says, “When I think of Lefty running [this] business that was art in motion, watching him run [Maser Galleries]. He was in the flow in the same way that he was when he was pitching. He was a natural. The creativity, the ideas just flowed out of him.”
Eventually, once the gallery in Seven Springs was established, Lefty got the idea to move and open another Maser Galleries location in Shadyside. “The first time I came to Shadyside was 1974, right when we opened. It was the arts festival,” Brenda recalls.
The building, where Maser Galleries remains 50 years later, was a former dry cleaner when Lefty first rented it. “Lefty hammered every board on that wall. Those barn wood walls, every nail was hammered in by him… There was nothing he couldn’t do.” But back then people thought Lefty was out of his mind to open another gallery along Walnut Street, which ironically, was right across the street from an Arts International gallery, his former employer. Doubting Lefty’s can-do attitude, naysayers thought Maser Galleries would be out of business within six months, incapable of withstanding the competition of a powerful chain like Arts International. However, not long after Maser Galleries arrived on Walnut Street, it was Arts International that closed its doors, not Lefty.

Brenda describes what Maser Galleries was like on Walnut Street in the 1970s, “When we first opened, Walnut Street then was almost all, if not all, independent owners, many different types of shops, and a lot of hippies. We had lots of arts and crafts items, we had shelves and shelves of crafts and little metal sculptures, paintings on marble, paintings on fungi, we just had all different little things. And as the street evolved, we evolved. So as the more upscale shops came in, so did we. Also, the timing was so perfect because the 70s was a time when art was really exploding and graphics were just coming out like Normal Rockwell, Erte, Simbari, LeRoy Neiman. It was just an amazing time when these limited-edition graphics were available for the first time, and we were on the ground floor of that.”
She continues, “Lefty always loved illustrators. We loved Nat Youngblood. He did all the illustrations for the Pittsburgh Press for 30 years. We published a lot of works by him. Lefty published a number of local artists John Shryock and Thomas Mosser, and then he reached out to some nationally known artists, and we had a whole publishing division for many years. We went to the art expo in New York, and we were not only on the end of buying art for the gallery, but on the end of selling artwork to galleries.”
The artworks of many of these mentioned artists are still available at Maser Galleries, along with other Pittsburgh natives who’ve achieved reputable success with their art, like Burton Morris, Fritz Keck, and Linda Barnicott.

In its early days, the Maser Gallery at Seven Springs reflected the clientele there, Brenda recalls, “tons of ski posters, craft items, gift items, and oil paintings.” Nowadays, she says, “We reflect the people of Pittsburgh. We always want to have something for everyone.”
As for the Maser family, Brenda, like her daughters, admits, “Our lives revolve around the gallery.” Despite previously having galleries in Seven Springs, Oxford Center, and even Market Square over the years, Maser Galleries along Walnut Street in Shadyside has stood the test of time. “We were all over at the gallery as much as we were at home,” she says.
Brenda acknowledges, “The greatest honor of my life has been to work there. It’s been such an honor to be surrounded by this beauty and by wonderful people. I always feel that the door is a filter and only special people come through our door. I’m so grateful for having could spend my life here in this place. Everybody who comes in, they have an extra sensitivity and awareness and appreciation for art and for life.”
Stepping through the doors of Maser Galleries is an opportunity to experience art almost like a sports memorabilia collector, stumbling upon a rare, autographed baseball card, except here the signatures are of beloved artists upon artworks, each with a unique style and flare. Unlike an art museum, where the pieces must stay put on their walls, here, visitors are welcome to purchase the pieces that catch their eye and take them home. When it comes to art galleries in Pittsburgh, Maser Galleries is a grand slam.
-GM
To experience Maser Galleries, visit: https://www.masergalleries.com/ or stop in at 5427 Walnut Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15232 and explore their ongoing 50th Anniversary Sale.