The Boston Arts Festival is an annual event designed to showcase the visual and performing arts in Boston. It is also called "ähts" — a good humored poke at the Boston accent. The festival is also used to promote Boston's Open Studios program.
The event brings over 50,000 visitors to Christopher Columbus Waterfront Park, on Boston Harbor, where they can meet the artists and craftspeople who are there to share a wide variety of art and high-end craft work, including painting, photography, ceramics, jewelry and sculpture, and much more.
The title also refers to a similarly named event that existed during the 1950s and '60s. Tents housing displays of works of fine art snaked through the walkways of the Public Garden. Across the street on the Common, an outdoor stage featured a variety of performances—free to the public—ranging from classical and popular concerts to performances of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas by Martyn Green's company. The Festival drew hundreds of thousands of people, but in the mid-1960s organizers announced a year's "break" to reassess finances, and the earlier version of the Festival never returned.
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