Flower show's return will offer pandemic antidote
As the nation approaches the beginning of its third year of the coronavirus
pandemic, and with nearly 870,000 Americans having died from COVID-19 since the
pandemic’s start, we’re increasingly looking for some good news --- and the return
of the Attleboro Arts Museum’s Flower Show for the first time since 2019
certainly qualifies as that.
The show had to be canceled the last two years, and the cancellation was
especially bitter in 2020, as it happened just a few days before the show was
set to open and right after Massachusetts went into lockdown.
The museum was shut down for three months after that cancellation, but has been
able to stay open ever since with a combination of virtual and in-person
exhibits that operated according to COVID-19 protocols. The flower show was
canceled last year as well, although an art exhibit was held.
Museum officials began planning for the show’s return in 2022 last summer, and
to their credit, they were able to announce last week that the show, with some
health and safety measures, including entry by reservation only, will indeed be able to return March 24-27.
That’s great news for the Attleboro area, which desperately needs some positive
developments after the last two years.
Here’s the link to my flower show column, which was published in the Jan. 25th issue of The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, MA:
https://www.thesunchronicle.
“The Attleboro Arts Museum’s Flower Show has always had great significance. The
fundraiser marks the start of spring and provides friends and neighbors with an
annual opportunity to connect after a long, frosty season indoors.”
--- Mim Brooks Fawcett about the museum’s flower show
That assessment, by Fawcett, the longtime executive director and chief curator
of the museum, about the flower show’s ability to buoy spirits and bring people
together would be right on in a “normal” year, but as everyone knows, life the
last couple of years has been anything but normal.
That’s why --- given the roller-coaster existence that we’ve all endured since
the flower show was canceled in March of 2020 in the early days of the
coronavirus pandemic --- news that the flower show will return with an
in-person event for its 24th year can be described as wonderful,
splendid, stupendous, exhilarating and even a bit miraculous without being
considered hyperbole.
The news is a welcome antidote to what’s happened since the show was first
canceled days before it was to open nearly two years ago. Back then, the show’s
cancellation was not only devastating for the museum and the show’s fans, but it
meant that the area had lost one of its most reliable harbingers of spring over
the last quarter-century.
The flower show became one more in a long list of things that people were forced
to do without. Gatherings, hugs, neighborhood visits, in-school learning,
traditional graduation ceremonies, fans at sporting events, normal religious
services and traditional observances of family rituals such as birthdays,
anniversaries, weddings and funerals all were either postponed, canceled or
banished to our new virtual purgatory. Above all, the medical community and
hospitals, and the dedicated people they employ, began facing enormous and
impossible pressures that those health care workers unfortunately still face
today.
Last winter, with vaccinations only beginning to be distributed across the
state, the museum had to cancel its show again, but still put on a nature-themed
art exhibition. Through it all, after being closed for three months in 2020, the
museum continued to offer exhibits, both virtually and at its 86 Park St.
facility in downtown Attleboro, and there was hope that its signature event,
the flower show, would return in 2022.
Thanks to, as Fawcett noted in the front-page story (“Attleboro Arts Museum
Flower Show returning, Friday, Jan. 21), a lot of hard work, the museum’s
patrons will soon be rewarded. The show --- with COVID-19 health and safety
measures, including reservations for timed entry --- will return from Thursday,
March 24 to Sunday, March 27, with a benefit preview scheduled for 6-8 p.m.
Wednesday, March 23. This year’s theme, Fawcett said, will be “Annual Habitats
--- Spring Gardens Gone Wild.”
Although patrons will have to be masked and some attractions such as the museum
café in the basement --- where people could sip coffee, enjoy a nosh and chat
with friends --- won’t be returning, many other staples of the show will be
back.
Planned attractions will include gardens from local landscapers and florists, a
nature-themed art exhibit, to-go art projects for children, artists working
throughout the gallery, animal masks and live music. Admission will remain $3
per day, with children under 9 free. The benefit preview will cost $15 for
museum members and $18 for non-members. More info: www.attleboroartsmuseum.org.
Fawcett said the show’s committee started working last summer on a viable plan.
“The safe resurrection of the show has been a massive project that involved
hard decisions,” Fawcett said. “And since we always err on the side of caution
at the museum, we’ve put great thought into building a smart event and tactical
plan that will appropriately bring this year’s flower show to life.”
Fawcett and the flower show committee deserve a lot of credit for bringing the
show back, because it will give the area an enormous boost. I say that not only
as an observer and patron of the museum for three-plus decades, but also as a
community partner with the museum in my role as a member of the Relay For Life
of Greater Attleboro volunteer committee. In that capacity, I’ve seen first-hand
that Fawcett, her staff and volunteers have the community’s well-being and
cultural enrichment as their top priority.
That’s why I feel comfortable in saying that the flower show’s return is truly one
of the feel-good news stories of the last couple of years.
Larry Kessler is
a retired Sun Chronicle local news editor and can be reached at larrythek65@gmail.com. He blogs at larrytheklineup.blogspot.com
Comments
Post a Comment