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PITTSBURGH - With 300 artists, more than 50 live music performances, 15 visual arts installations and 4 original dance and theatre productions, summer begins in downtown Pittsburgh with the 49th annual Three Rivers Arts Festival. The 2008 Festival will again enliven the historic plazas, city streets and open spaces of downtown Pittsburgh with original art and live performances due to continuing renovations at Point State Park.

"For 49 years, the Three Rivers Arts Festival has served as the unofficial start of summer for the City of Pittsburgh," said Richard Sieber, executive vice president of the Three Rivers Arts Festival advisory board. "Through the collaboration of government agencies, foundations and civic organizations, we have reinvented the Festival over the past two years as a model for how the arts can engage the community and enliven the downtown core of the city."

As the longest and largest arts event in the city, the Festival is a major driver of economic activity in downtown Pittsburgh. Approximately 500,000 people attend the Festival's 17 days of performance, visual art and music, and the Duquesne Light Artists Market generates about $2.4 million in direct sales for participating artists. Overall, VisitPittsburgh estimates that the 2007 Festival generated a $23 million economic impact for downtown businesses.

Artistically, the Three Rivers Arts Festival both produces and exposes some of the most cutting-edge, quality and innovative work happening in the Pittsburgh art scene and beyond. "The 2008 Festival features more new and site-specific creations than ever before," said Executive Director Elizabeth Reiss. "The works we've selected and commissioned for the Festival represent the themes of do-it-yourself, repurposing discarded materials for creative uses, and community identity that are prevalent in the global contemporary art world today."