Art in Bloom, the Saint Louis Art Museum’s annual celebration of art and flowers is being held this weekend. I went to see the show this morning. The museum offers a special members only time slot, before normal hours and I took advantaged of this opportunity. Still, even though I arrived just after eight, all of the parking lots were full and I had to hike a bit to get to the door. This year there are thirty pairings on display, scattered around the museum and spread across all three of its floors. At each installation there was already gathered a crowd of appreciators of beauty and everyone had a camera. It was hard not to photo-bomb other people’s pictures and to not have mine bombed too.
The Slammer invites the florists to compete. The Chrysanthemums arrangement took second place. The museums selects the artworks to be paired, which the florist draw for randomly. Horse trading is allowed. The selected artworks cover the gambit of the museum’s collection that is on display. On Friday, some of the florists were on hand to discuss their floral arrangements. I photographed all thirty pairings and chose these representatives, because I liked them the most. They seemed to capture a sense of the artwork the best.
I spoke with a museum representative about the show. This is the museum’s most popular event of the year. Come Saturday, the building will be filled to capacity and the staff will be forced to turn people away due to the fire code. I’m glad that I got to see the show, while it was still relatively uncrowded. I can only imagine how crowded it will be come tomorrow, on the weekend proper.