Tuesday morning, Visit Oxford held a press conference to announce details about the upcoming Double Decker Arts Festival. The festival will be held April 28-29 this year.
Visit Oxford Director Mary Allyn Hedges announced the presenting sponsors, Ole Miss Athletics and the UM Museum, and Athletic Director Ross Bjork spoke about getting the museum involved. After Hedges and Lee Ann Stubbs, the festival coordinator, approached Bjork about being a presenting sponsor, Bjork called Robert Saarnio, the UM Museum director, about joining as a presenting sponsor.
“I said, you know what, it’d be easy to just put our logo on there, Ole Miss Athletics gets all the recognition, but is there someone else? Is there another group that we could perhaps partner with that needs the exposure, deserves the exposure, would maybe be a good fit for the festival?” Bjork said. “And it took us a little while… And the museum was just a perfect fit… It’s the front door of our campus, from a physical standpoint. And so we decided to make the call to Robert (Saarnio)… Essentially, we wanted to do this for the museum. We wanted to do it for the city. To draw people to continue to come to our great city of Oxford and our campus. It just made natural sense to have the museum sponsor an art festival.”
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Stubbs then unveiled the poster artwork, a colorful watercolor by local artist Pam Locke.
“I’m really excited to have the opportunity to do this. I’ve attended Double Decker since we moved to Oxford as either a shopper or lately in an Oxford artist guild booth. So now this year I get to have my own booth, and I’m very, very excited about the opportunity,” Lock said.
The music lineup will begin Friday with three performances sponsored by Thacker Mountain Radio. Saturday will continue with performances by artists like rock outfit Seratones and James McMurtry. Nathaniel Rateliff and The Night Sweats will be headlining Saturday.
