Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly reported that Artscape is returning to July. The festival is actually being moved to the first weekend of August.
After a one-year, rain-soaked stint as a fall festival, Artscape is moving back to the summer in 2024.
Returning the annual event to the summer was the preference of stakeholders working with the city, Mayor Brandon Scott said on Sunday. According to his director of communications, Bryan Doherty, the 2024 event will be held over the first weekend in August.
“It was a collective decision of the partners, the folks that are down in that area,” the mayor said. “That’s what they wanted to do.”
The decision puts an end to the one-year experiment to hold Artscape in September and shifts the date back to its traditional summer time frame. It means organizers have eight months to plan the 2024 edition, two fewer months than if it were held in September.
Asked before the Mayor’s Christmas Parade if the event will be held in the Midtown and Station North areas as it was this year, Scott said the city is “still working those details out” and will have more information soon. According to Tonya Miller Hall, Senior Advisor of Arts and Culture in the Mayor’s Office, organizers are planning to hold a news conference later this month to provide information about Artscape 2024.
Set by TV weather forecasters
Started in 1982 in the Mount Royal Cultural District, and billed for many years as America’s largest free outdoor arts festival, Artscape took place in June for its first two years. From 1984 to 2019, it was held in July, usually the third weekend of the month – a tradition that prompted some to say it always seems to take place on the hottest weekend of the year.
According to former Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) president Fred Lazarus IV, the date was changed after it rained the first two years and organizers asked the weather forecasters at Baltimore’s then-three local television stations to recommend a weekend when it was least likely to rain. All three recommended mid- to late-July and Artscape organizers took their advice, he said.
Despite concerns about the heat, Artscape typically has drawn upwards of 300,000 visitors over a three-day period. It wasn’t held in person in 2020, 2021 or 2022, a decision blamed initially on the COVID-19 pandemic.
When Artscape resumed this year, it was scheduled for Sept. 22 to 24, but all events on the middle day were cancelled due to inclement weather and total attendance dropped as a result. Baltimore’s largest festival this year was Baltimore AFRAM, which drew more than 300,000 people to Druid Hill Park over Juneteenth weekend, June 17 and 18.
Shift to September
The decision to shift Artscape to September was led by Donna Drew Sawyer, the former CEO of the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts (BOPA), an independent organization that has a contract to serve as the city’s events producer, film office and arts council.
Sawyer said she didn’t like her employees working outdoors in the heat of summer and wanted to move BOPA’s signature event to September, when temperatures were likely to be cooler. She resigned in January after Scott said he lost confidence in her ability to lead the agency, but the September date had already been set.
Named CEO during the administration of former Mayor Catherine Pugh, Sawyer received $83,232 – half a year’s salary – after stepping down and threatening to sue the city for damaging her reputation as an arts administrator. She has been replaced first by Brian Lyles, BOPA’s chair and president, who served in an unpaid capacity, and then by Todd Yuhanick, who has had the title of interim BOPA CEO since June 2.
Weather problems and schedule conflicts
Although temperatures were cooler in September, weather still affected the 2023 festival, as high winds and rain prompted organizers to cancel events on September 23.
The shift to September brought other issues that festival organizers didn’t face in July, when classes aren’t in session on the MICA and University of Baltimore campuses.
Organizers of two other festivals, Hampdenfest and Remfest, said they would cancel or postpone their September events and that the potential scheduling conflict with Artscape was a contributing factor in their decisions.
Members of Baltimore’s Jewish community expressed concerns about the festival’s overlap with the religious holiday of Yom Kippur, which began on the evening of Sept. 24. Sawyer had already rescheduled the event from Sept. 15 to 17, when it would have overlapped with Rosh Hashanah.
In July, representatives for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO), MICA, the University of Baltimore and Lyric Baltimore wrote a joint letter expressing concerns about BOPA’s decision to hold Artscape in September and the potentially negative impact it could have on other events scheduled for that weekend.
The BSO had its gala at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall; the Lyric had four shows by comedian Nate Bargatze; and the Ravens had a home game at M&T Bank Stadium that weekend, among other events. In their letter, the arts organizations cited what they considered a lack of communication between BOPA and local arts organizations regarding planning for street closings, traffic and crowd control and other city services while Artscape was underway.
The questions prompted Scott to provide assurances that the city can put on more than one big event on a weekend.
“We are a major city,” he said at a press event in August. “Major cities are going to have multiple events at the same time, consistently, right?…Walk and chew gum, as my grandmother would say.”
Contract expiring
After decades when Artscape was produced by BOPA with help from city agencies, the 2023 event was produced jointly by BOPA and the Mayor’s Office, with Miller Hall and Yuhanick billed as co-directors of the event. Artscape also had a larger footprint in 2023, expanding to include much of the Station North Arts District as well as the Mount Royal Cultural District.
BOPA’s contract with the city to serve as its events producer, film office and arts council is scheduled to expire on June 30, 2024, about one month before Artscape 2024 will be held.
Eric Costello, the Baltimore City Council member who heads the council’s Ways and Means Committee and was critical of BOPA’s performance under Sawyer, said the decision about whether to renew BOPA’s contract beyond June 30 is made by the Mayor’s Office, not the council.
Miller Hall declined to say whether the city will continue to work with BOPA after June 30. She said the city is required to give BOPA’s board notice of its decision at least 180 days before its contract expires, which puts the deadline at Dec. 31, 2023.
In advance of the decision, BOPA recently had a change in one of its lead staffers. Miller Hall announced at an event last week that Christopher Brooks is the new director of the Baltimore City Arts Council, replacing Jocquelyn “Jackie” Downs, the arts council’s director for the past five years.
Hi there, the “street performer” in the baby mask is Jeff Fahringer of the Big Whimsy silt-walkers.