In 2020, at the outset of the pandemic, I spent hours at the North Carolina Museum of Art’s (NCMA) Museum Park.
I have vivid memories of strolling the path encircling the sprawling, gently sloping grounds with my daughter, Eve, who was two at the time. We puzzled over Jeppe Hein’s Mirror Labyrinth NY and I have a photo of Eve looking up to the sky, tiny underneath one of the three towering rings that compose Thomas Sayre’s iconic Gyre.
So it feels right this year, on the fifth anniversary of a global lockdown, that Art in Bloom, the NCMA’s marquee fundraising festival of florals, is themed ‘Art in the Park,’ a celebration of one of Raleigh’s most stunning and accessible open spaces and a likely lifeline for thousands of Triangle residents in recent years.
Six large floral installations take their inspiration from artworks in the 164-acre Ann and Jim Goodnight Museum Park. A total of 42 floral designs from 30 designers from across the state and elsewhere are interpretations of works housed in and around the museum’s West Building, home to the NCMA’s People’s Collection.
This year marks the 11th Art In Bloom, and, according to museum director Valerie Hillings, 19,000 people are expected to pass through West Building’s doors this week and over the weekend for the event. In the past decade, Hillings told a crowd at a Tuesday press preview, more than 150,000 people from across North Carolina have visited Art in Bloom, and more than 400 artists have collaborated on as many installations.
“[The designers’] work celebrates and exemplifies the beauty of the Peoples’ Collection … bringing it to life in new and exciting ways,” Hillings said.
There’s no wrong way to do Art In Bloom, but if you haven’t had a chance to already, it’s definitely worth checking out the Museum Park before you venture into West Building (or afterward).
Consider starting at the south end of the park’s Cloud Chamber for the Trees and Sky, the British artist Chris Drury’s cylindrical stone sculpture that functions as a camera obscura and one of my favorite solitary spaces in the city.
Inside the sculpture, a pinhole in the roof filters sunlight and reflects shadows from surrounding trees outside, onto the floor. Inside the museum, Raleigh artists Taylor Weber and Sean Riggins render the chamber in a circular altar of sorts, topped with fern, hanging carnations, and alstroemeria, with columns that give way to a wheel of astilbes, delphiniums, irises, Liatris, pompons, and tulips.
Make your way north to the center of the park and marvel at Sayre’s Gyre, represented at the entrance to the West Building in three rings of magnolia leaves by Magnolia Metal Fabrication, a custom design-build company out of Apex.
Then, head slightly northeast to Collapse I, a 34-foot-long concrete and steel sculpture that resembles the lower half of a reclining woman, by the South African artist Ledelle Moe. The sculpture is designed to “stretch the scale of the body to echo the contours of the landscape,” according to the NCMA’s website; inside the gallery, roses, ranunculus, hyacinths, daisies, rattan, and strips of reed echo the sculpture, to joyous effect.
Walk directly east to the very edge of the park, where it butts up against Blue Ridge Road, in between the two parking lots. There, you’ll find Ulau, Mark di Suvero’s interactive, abstract sculpture composed of red-painted industrial steel beams and stainless steel.
Artist Joseph Barnes captures the sculpture’s dynamic spirit with thick, crimson-painted, criss-crossing rods of bamboo, as well as cascading chrysanthemums, orchids, roses, lilies, anthuriums, and heliconia.
Finally, walk to the west wing exterior of West Building where you’ll find Ursula von Rydingsvard’s Ogromna, a series of carefully stacked cedar blocks that widen into the shape of a funnel, and James Prosek’s abstract bronze sculpture Abstract Fish No. 4.
The pieces’ likenesses are inside: Raleigh designer Heather Ann Miller channels Ogromna’s ‘distinctly feminine strength,’ in her words, with textured layers of hydrangeas, amaranthus, coxcomb, asparagus fern, orchids, carnations, lisianthus, and various grasses and vines, and Maureen Hammond captures an abstract fish in chrysanthemums, eucalyptus, gladiolus, celosia, carnations, protea, fern, hydrangeas, and scabiosas.
In addition to these six pieces from the park, artists and designers have created floral interpretations of three dozen works from the NCMA’s permanent collection. All are beautiful, elaborate, carefully crafted, and entirely worth seeing (and smelling).
“We hope this weekend will inspire visitors to venture into the park,” said Hillings, the NCMA’s director, “in search of unique encounters with art in the natural environment.”
Art In Bloom runs through Sunday, March 23. More information here.
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