Luminaria moves to November

Luminaria is held in downtown San Antonio on March 9, 2013. Luminaria is held in downtown San Antonio on March 9, 2013. Photo: TOM REEL, San Antonio Express-News Photo: TOM REEL, San Antonio Express-News Image 1 of / 147 Caption Close Luminaria moves to November 1 / 147 Back to Gallery

SAN ANTONIO — Yes, Virginia, there will be a Luminaria this year, though it'll look a little different and run twice as long.

The seventh installment of the annual arts blowout will take place Nov. 7-8, eight months later in the year than it's traditionally taken place and one night longer than it has run in the past. It is also moving from HemisFair Park, its home since 2010, to the River North area between the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts and the Southwest School of Art.

“It's a really great palette,” said Liz Tullis, president of the Luminaria board. “I think it's going to have more of an open feel than it's had in the past because of the nature of how that area is.”

Multidisciplinary performances and displays will take place both along the River Walk and at street level. The footprint still is being finalized.

Admission will be free, as it always has been. However, plans are being made for a ticket component that would allow for an enhanced experience of some aspects of Luminaria for those who are willing to pony up.

“We're going to be putting together things where you get to meet the artist and have a more personalized experience,” Tullis said. “It's a ticket that gives you some kind of expanded access. There is a constituency within San Antonio that wants to have that more intimate experience.”

Artists from San Antonio and around the world will be featured, said Felix Padrón, director of the city's Department for Culture and Creative Development, which helps coordinate the event.

“One of the things the curatorial team is proposing is to create this platform for Luminaria to be viewed or to highlight San Antonio as a crossroads of ideas and artistic endeavors,” Padrón said. “That is why this international component is going to have a larger presence.”

As it happens, the San Antonio Symphony will be performing both nights at the Tobin, which opens Sept. 4. That's a big plus for Luminaria, Tullis said.

“That's one of the things we wanted,” she said. “We wanted Luminaria to have its part (on the arts scene), but we also wanted to highlight that there are already existing things (going on). You may be going to something that's part of Luminaria, but you spill into things going on at the Southwest School, at Tobin.”

The expansion and date shift were among the ideas proposed in a five-year strategic plan that the Luminaria board commissioned last year from New York-based Dissident Industries. One of the proposals in the plan called for Luminaria to eventually be a 10-day, citywide event.

That idea is still on the table, Padrón said.

“We're viewing this as a transition year to start moving in that direction,” he said. “It's not going to happen overnight, but I think extending it to a second day is a good first step.”

The strategic plan also proposed moving the event from its traditional berth in March to November. The idea laid out in the plan was to schedule it at a time where it wouldn't have to compete for audiences and international media attention with South by Southwest in Austin and with international visual arts events such as the Armory Show and Whitney Biennial in New York.

Adding a night will give attendees the opportunity to take a more leisurely approach to the event than they might have been able to before, when they just had a few hours to try to see it all, Tullis said.

“Some people may want to come twice,” she said.

The brainchild of then-Mayor Phil Hardberger, Luminaria was launched in 2008 as a one-night annual arts celebration. The first two years, it ranged around the Alamo and down Houston Street, later moving to the area in and around HemisFair Park. It drew an estimated 100,000 people its first year, and attendance has grown every year since.

Beyond the footprint, which has moved around and changed shape, the basic template for the event hasn't changed much. Among other things, fundraising has focused on that year's event with no attention to the future.

That approach is simply not sustainable, Tullis said. And so, the event has to change.

“What was happening before is, we were managing year to year,” she said. “Now, when we're starting to talk to people about private funding, we're talking about 2014, 2015, 2016, and they're starting to see it more as an organization rather than as an annual event. That's what made it hard (before).”

At some point, professional staffing also will be a part of the picture. Up to this point, Luminaria has been pulled together almost entirely by volunteers.

“They got us to this place,” Tullis said. “At a certain point, we can't expect people to continue to do that.”

dlmartin@express-news.net

Twitter: @DeborahMartinEN