Two of Baltimore’s major public arts events won’t take place as previously scheduled this fall due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Both the Baltimore Book Festival and Light City are being postponed. The book festival will be postponed until 2021, the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts announced Tuesday. Light City, which brings light art, installations, and other arts and culture programming to neighborhoods across the city, will be postponed until 2022.
“The current health crisis has had a profound effect on the many wonderful aspects of the work BOPA does to make Baltimore a more vibrant place to live, work and play,” BOPA CEO Donna Drew Sawyer said in a news release Tuesday. “Sadly, we have had to postpone our large-scale public events at least through the end of 2020.”
That doesn’t include the annual New Year’s Eve Spectacular, yet. A decision has not yet been made about that event, BOPA said in the news release.
Sawyer said in an interview that Light City was postponed an extra year to make sure international partners and artists aren’t prohibited or restricted from traveling.
“It is a monumental task to erect Light City, and to have us rebound with the health crisis for something that immense a lift, it’s just too risky to say that we’re going to do it in ‘21,” she said. “The book festival, I think we can regulate that to smaller groups if we’re still in this situation. We can’t do that with Light City.”
The announcement comes as more fall and winter events are being postponed or cancelled while coronavirus cases continue to rise.
The city previously cancelled two of Baltimore’ signature summer events, the Fourth of July fireworks display and the Artscape public arts and culture festival.
BOPA said it plans to continue to hold programming virtually. That includes the Free Fall Baltimore celebration of free arts and culture events, and the 32nd annual Baltimore Open Studio Tour, which takes the public inside local artists’ studios and work spaces. Both events are set to take place on a virtual platform in October.
In addition, the Artscape Online Artists’ Market will launch on Friday.