Holden Slattery2021-02-12T11:49:30-05:00January 22, 2021| Cantini, who was a vital part of Pittsburgh’s public art scene in the twentieth century, believed art should be free and available to everyone By Holden Slattery In 1930, eleven-year-old Virgil Cantini was struggling to adjust to his new life as an immigrant in Weirton, West Virginia. He’d recently moved from a sunny Italian village to a smoky American steel town. His father and oldest brother had already been in America for years, working to save money, when his mother came with the other seven children. They weren’t only reunifying in the famous land of opportunity; they were fleeing Italy so the children wouldn’t be conscripted into Benito Mussolini’s fascist military.