Trust’s Upcoming Revitalization Plans Include Katz Plaza, and Byham and O’Reilly Theaters
By SHARON EBERSON
The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust offered introductions and a sneak peek into the 2026 Dollar Bank Three RIvers Arts Festival at it’s new home, marking the official opening of Arts Landing. The Downtown park was ready for the NFL Draft, and continued to be open to the public in what Trust leaders called “a soft opening,” although it has attracted up to 1,500 visitors daily, as preparations were underway for the Arts Festival.
The seven-day celebration of the arts runs June 5-7 and 11-14, 2026.
The installation is located on the Penn Avenue side of Arts Landing.
(Images: Sharon Eberson/onStage Pittsburgh)
The music and entertainment portions of the Arts Festival opens Friday night with Squonk Opera premiering the new interactive work Joy Machine on the Penn Avenue side of Arts Landing, and the Spin Doctors on the Dollar Bank Stage on the Fort Duquesne side. Joan Osborne is the closing act, with hip-hop, jazz, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and more in between.
Brooke Horejsi, the Trust’s Chief Programming and Engagement Officer, noted, “You can visit the artists market, where we have over 350 unique visual artists that will participate in this year’s Festival,” and you may want to come twice, because, “There’ll be so many of them changing over between this weekend and next weekend, that you’ll be able to find unique treasures between the two weekends.”
The Juried Visual Arts Exhibition, at the 820 Liberty Gallery, features 22 artists that come from within 150 miles of Pittsburgh.
A quick view of the daily time schedule does not included the specific hours of operation for certain attractions:
- Entertainment headliners | 7:30-9 p.m.
- All Other Performances | noon-7:30 p.m.
- Artist Market | noon-8 p.m.
- Giant Eagle Creativity Zone | noon-6 p.m.
For detailed information, visit: https://traf.trustarts.org/traf_home/visit.
The 67-year-old Arts Festival came under the auspices of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust in 2009. After spending many years in and around Point State Park and Gateway Plaza, the festival moved into the area that once was best known for a parking garage and the Goodyear Auto Service store at 800 Fort Duquesne Blvd.
On Friday, the view from the top of the Great Lawn, looking toward the brand-new Dollar Bank Stage, is an impressive spread of bridges peaking out from treetops, and the pointed tops of dozens of Artists Market white booths.
A map of the Market and other Arts Festival sites — left, download at https://traf.trustarts.org/traf_home/visit/map — shows that Artist Market booths extend to the Rachel Carson Bridge. The artists, wares and booth numbers can be found at https://www.zapplication.org/event-gallery.php?ID=14223.
Pittsburgh Cultural Trust president Kendra Whitlock Ingram offered opening marks on a sunny Friday, joined Peter M. Kubiska, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of longtime Arts Festival supporter Dollar Bank, and Horejsi.
delivers opening remarks at the opening of the
2026 Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival.
(Video: onStage Pittsburgh)
Ingram has been heartened to see people casually strolling through the space, pre-Festival, and stopping to observe and ponder the public art, with plans to continue to change the exhibits over time.
She was hoping for “good weather karma” for the rest of the Festival’s stay, but, “It’s Pittsburgh,” so rain is inevitable. (Saturday’s forecast is for rain in the late afternoon and into the evening.)
The opening is a culmination of the completion of Arts Landing, accomplished in 22 months, to be ready for the NFL Draft in April.
The public space is part of a Downtown revitalization plan, and she said that includes “a lot of capital projects that we had started before this all was a twinkle in anyone’s eye. So we’re getting back to that. That’s going to be protecting the investment that was made in all the buildings, and a lot of them need a lot of capital improvement.”
That includes a restoration of Katz Plaza, where there are dying trees, and maintenance on the fountain, and work on the Byham and O’Reilly theaters, both owned and operated by the Trust.
“And then we’ve been doing a lot of work in the theaters, the kind of non-sexy stuff, like the rigging, the sound, the lights, the orchestra pit lift, the front of house elevators, seat replacement [at the Byham], and the roofs on the Byham and the O’Reilly — all that stuff that you’ve got to do, and hasn’t been done in 30 years.”
Top, Brooke Horejsi, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s Chief Programming and Engagement Officer, left, Trust leader Kendra Whitlock Ingram, address the gathering to open the 2026 Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival at Arts Landing.
Categories: Feature Stories, Festival, Our Posts, Venue
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