Arts Festival thrives amid some miscues
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There was more than art at the Three Rivers Arts Festival. Lilith Bailey-Kroll leads two dozen people in yoga exercise in Point State Park Sunday morning. Her Yoga is My Health Insurance group offered the sessions Saturday and Sunday mornings at the Three Rivers Arts Festival. -
There was more than art at the Three Rivers Arts Festival. Fish from the Ohio River were on display in the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission aquarium to promote environmental awareness. -
When a band was on the Arts Festival main stage, it was difficult to have a conversation with artists in the crafts booths in Point State Park.
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In the second year of its stewardship of the Three Rivers Arts Festival, The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust increased its commitment to the visual arts, continued to consolidate and make user-friendly its Downtown footprint, and expanded public awareness of its green achievements and of the trust's other programming.
And it remained free, no small feat in today's economy.
Glitches remain, and it's important to examine them while keeping in mind that the festival under the trust is a work in progress. An internal evaluation will follow this year's festival, and input from visitors will also be considered.
When the trust assumed operation of the festival from the Carnegie Museums, president and CEO Kevin McMahon envisioned it becoming a pivotal attraction among dynamic expansive summer events throughout the Cultural District and the city. But that's the kind of big dream that takes years to evolve.
Mr. McMahon is aware of the traditional strengths of the festival, reflected in weekend expansions of the Artists Market and return of the juried visual art exhibition and of public art.
Successes include expanding collaborative efforts with local arts groups -- ranging from art-related films by Pittsburgh Filmmakers at the Harris Theater to yoga in Point State Park -- that increase the choices for festival visitors and the audiences for those organizations.
"We really believe that two plus two equals eight," Mr. McMahon said. "Presenting a variety of organizations is to their benefit as well as the festival's."
Festival director Marguerite Jarrett Marks said that the festival offers the organizations marketing, infrastructure and a potential audience estimated at a half-million people. Reaching out to neighboring West Virginia, Maryland and Ohio for submissions to the juried exhibition was a step toward achieving the trust's goal to establish Pittsburgh as the region's cultural hub.
First Published June 16, 2010 12:00 am
