This museum invited 100 florists to turn their art into arrangements
I got a behind-the-scenes look at installation day for the de Young and Legion of Honor Museum's Bouquets to Art event in San Francisco. Here's everything I saw.
One of the perks of being a journalist, especially one in the arts and culture space, is getting a first look at exhibition openings and installations. I’ve filmed exhibition installation videos for the museum where I work, but sometimes capturing all of the drilling and leveling isn’t that exciting. But seeing florists at work, creating living art before your eyes, is far more interesting.
While floral events are popping up at museums around the world, the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco was one of the first to do it. Their Bouquets to Art program, now in its 42nd year, invites floral designers from across the Bay Area to take inspiration from works on view from the museum’s permanent collection. The popular event and fundraiser for the museums opened this week at the Legion of Honor and de Young, with over 100 arrangements to feast your eyes upon.
Coverage of the Legion of Honor’s last event…
I got a special press invite to watch the bouquet formation in action on Monday, getting a full tour of the pop-up arrangements, chatting with artists, and learning more about how this San Francisco museum puts on this flagship event every year.
How do florists choose the art that inspires their arrangements?
They don’t. Florists apply to participate in the fall and hope for the best.
The de Young and Legion assign artworks to event participants based off of their floral styles. Sometimes, the artworks repeat every year. For example, florists are consistently assigned to make something inspired by a set of looped wire sculptures by Ruth Asawa that entered the de Young Museum’s collection in 2005, a gift from the artist.
Spacing and location have a lot to do with the choice of artworks, too. The museums consciously assign artworks that aren’t right next to each other to give the floral arrangements room to breathe and accommodate the high visitor traffic during this annual event.
What’s the process like for florists? How do they plan and prepare?
Planning is key. Once they’re assigned an artwork, some start sketching out a design and picking forms or textures from the work to recreate with plants. Yet others might start by choosing their blooms first, especially if one type of flower will serve as the foundation of the arrangement.
This event isn’t your regular floral design show. It’s a fundraiser for the museums’ exhibitions, conservation projects, and educational programs. The quality of the florals matters and reflects the image of the museums. Akin to a special exhibition, visitors are paying more to get in and want to be wowed.
How florists make sure their flowers are approved, execute their visions inside the museum, and keep flowers fresh for 5+ days
If you’ve worked at a museum, you know about the ‘no plants’ rule. When I started my first museum job, I couldn’t even bring a cactus to my desk. My office was on the same floor as our collections storage, and I was told that even one loose bug run the risk of getting into our thousands of archival papers.
Bouquets to Art runs a similar vetting process. Florists check into the museum with materials ready for inspection by the museum’s conservators. Plants are misted down with bug-killed agents and examined for any abnormalities or insects.
Once inside, the florists map to their artwork and get to building. Things get dirty real quick. Tarps on the floor catch trimmings of pampass grasses while industrial rolling carts hold chicken wire, pliers, hand-dyed orchids, and callalilies. One mother-daughter pair used a bench inside the gallery to prep their flowers on top of old newspapers.
I loved watching the florists’ creations evolve and grow, one stem after the other. Most show up in pairs of two, and I loved meeting the family members and friends showing up for their floral afficianados as assistants for the day. The Floral Exhibitors team, that’s typically run by experts in the Bay Area flower industry, inspect the arrangements daily. If someone’s roses look droopy or they notice leaves curling in, they’ll reach out to that florist and do a refresh to ensure all bouquets look their best for the duration of the six-day event.
More of my favorite ‘Bouquets to Art’ creations
I’m no flower expert, but I definitely noticed some trends among the arrangements. Hand-painted anthuriums were a stem of choice for many.
The centerpiece work of the presentation at the Legion of Honor is a collab with found floral called “The Artists’ Garden” that is being tended to all week. Just a few weeks prior I saw the Thom Browne runway show happen in this very gallery. Crazy!
This was also the best-smelling exhibition I’ve ever attended. The rose and jasmine scents from these two arrangements were a pleasant surprise and I loved how these two chose florals that emulated the textures of a billowing satin cloak or a sensual, marble body.
It’s not too late to get tickets to Bouquets to Art, on view through this Sunday! They sell quick, but there are a few visiting slots available and dozens more arrangements at their sister museum in Golden Gate Park, the de Young.
