LINDSBORG ‒ The Midwest Art Exhibition remains the consummate launch for the annual Messiah Festival of the Arts. Their convergence this week marks the end of winter, the kiss of spring.
The 124th annual Exhibition, Kansas’ longest-running art show, continues through April 21 at Lindsborg’s Birger Sandzén Memorial Gallery. Among features this year are a retrospective by Hutchinson painter Don Fullmer and paintings by Patricia Scarborough of Geneva, Nebraska. There are mobiles by Scott Brown of Hutchinson, recent acquisitions to the Gallery’s permanent collection, and early drawings by Sandzén.
Founded in 1899, the Exhibition continued in various buildings on the Bethany College campus and has been at home in the Sandzén Gallery since it opened in 1957.
The Exhibition was added to the (1881) Messiah Festival by organizers Carl Lotav, who headed the Bethany College art department; G. N. Malm, Lindsborg author, businessman, professional designer and artist; and Birger Sandzén, the legendary artist and Bethany College faculty member.
The Sandzén Gallery has become an immutable institution and, for many, a quiet setting that advances beauty ‒ stories, paintings, sculpture ‒ a place that offers a sense of continuity, even security. It is an institution firmly rooted in liberty, in free expression, boundless scope and range, the sheer joy of expression, and with doors open to all.
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The Exhibition and Messiah Festival of the Arts meet during Holy Week for an eight-day celebration of faith, music and art, now a time-honored regional tradition.
” Music and visual arts have been at the core of the life of Lindsborg, almost since the first Swedish-American immigrant pioneers established the community in 1869… ” wrote A. John Pearson, the late historian and archivist, in 2010. “Those pioneers came to the New World primarily for religious freedom of worship and expression — which at the time was unattainable in their part of Europe. With them they brought intense sensitivities and appreciation for music and the fine arts.”
In December 1881 the immigrants established a Messiah oratorio tradition, the large chorus and orchestra known as the Bethany Oratorio Society or, commonly, The Messiah Chorus.
For more than a century, the heart of this Festival lay in Handel’s “Messiah”, a beloved classic in western culture; this marriage of text and music, with performances on Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday, told in three parts the story of the Nativity, Christ’s Passion and Resurrection, and the promise of Redemption; on Good Friday, Bach’s “Passion According to St. Matthew”. Each unfolds in a masterful intertwining of solo voices, chorus, and orchestra.
The “Messiah” and “St. Matthew Passion” are now the underpinnings of a Festival Week that lasts two weeks.
This year, events on the Bethany campus begin March 18 with the Bethany College juried student art exhibition and conclude with Oratorio events at Presser Hall: “St. Matthew Passion”, 7:30 p.m. Good Friday (March 29) and Handel’s “Messiah” at 3 p.m. on Easter Sunday,
Experiences in between include a Messiah soloists’ recital at 7:30 p.m. March 26 at Presser Hall; honors students’ recitals; and downtown, Lindsborg Collects, an exhibition (through March 31) from local collections at the Smoky Valley Arts and Folklife Center; a Jazz Walk at 7 p.m. March 22; and Våffeldagen March 23.
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The Midwest Art Exhibition, Messiah Week and its component events remind us that through art we experience a certain freedom, permission to capture a moment in the flurry of being alive. We realize passion in music and in visuals that catch the fluidity of life in mid-stride and stop it long enough for us to hold on.
Art offers a release from our own narrow circumstance. It takes us away to compelling places and pursuits to experience their cadences and continuities. It is an opportunity to see and hear what truly matters, what is valid, who can love and be loved, what can be trusted.
