OUTDOOR MUSEUM SHOW EXPANDS TO LAKE WORTH IN NOVEMBER
Show that debuted in WPB heads south from Nov. 26-Dec. 2.
LAKE WORTH — The Canvas Outdoor Museum Show, the nation’s largest outdoor museum show that has been held in West Palm Beach, is coming to Lake Worth next month, with 10 artists participating to transform downtown into a giant outdoor museum.
“We’re super-excited to start with you this year,” Nicole Henry, the show’s founder and curator, said Tuesday morning at a 25-minute news conference at the Cultural Council of Palm Beach County’s office. “We’re trying to create a strong nucleus in the city of Lake Worth.”
The one-week show will be held Nov. 26-Dec. 2 from Lake Worth Beach to City Hall on North Dixie Highway, Henry said.
Blank walls will be reimagined with colossal murals, art installations and interactive sculptures in high-profile locations downtown.
The theme this year will be “unity.”
“There’s so much division in the world, so I feel art is one of those things that can bring people together,” Henry said. Canvas will announce the artists and locations closer to the event.
Canvas founder, curator
Mayor Pam Triolo called the city an arts district, saying how it’s part of Lake Worth’s DNA.
“It’s the fiber of our very being,” Triolo said. “I talked to my husband about (the show) and he said, ‘What are you so excited about?’ I said, ‘This is big, really big!’ He still didn’t get it.”
The city, the Lake Worth Community Redevelopment Agency and the Cultural Council have been working on bringing the event to Lake Worth for the past seven months, Henry said.
“We know a lot people that work in the city, in the Cultural Council, so it’s just been an ongoing conversation,” she said. “The idea is to expand throughout the entire county.”
Rena Blades, the Cultural Council’s president and CEO, said the show will help cultural tourism in the city.
“Cultural tourists spend more, they stay longer and they’re about to come in droves to Lake Worth in a way that we haven’t seen before,” Blades said.
The show debuted in West Palm Beach in 2015 and featured some 20 murals around the city, with a lineup of local and international artists whose works came to life in plain view. The works remain an attraction for bike tours and visitors from downtown to Northwood Village.
Henry said the Lake Worth artwork also will remain after the show is over.
“It brings people in all year,” she said. “It will bring people in to eat at restaurants and shop at local shops.”
‘Art is one of those things that can bring people together.’