For the first time since February of 2020, Gallery Night is returning to Downtown Pensacola next month.
“We are so excited,” said Sydney Robinson, the director of Gallery Night Pensacola. “We knew that announcing Gallery Night’s return was going to kind of be an indicator to people in Pensacola that things were maybe coming back to a sense of normalcy. I hate to use that term normal because we know that things have changed and so much has happened in the last year but things are feeling safer again and we can’t wait to have everybody downtown.”
Over the past few months, Robinson and her team have been meeting and looking over data from the CDC as well as the city of Pensacola. They also saw other events slowly beginning to come back and decided that this was the time to bring back the monthly street party.
“(On) Friday, July 16, we’re returning to our third-Friday structure, so the third Friday of every month is going to be Gallery Night again.”
Robinson also announced the theme of the first post-COVID Gallery Night will celebrate Escambia County’s anniversary. “We’re going to be partnering with the county’s bicentennial theme, because the bicentennial event is happening the next day on Saturday (the 17th), so our event, in tandem with that, is going to be Pensacola Heritage.”
The themes for the rest of the year’s Gallery Nights will be announced in the coming weeks. The footprint for the event will be the same with Palafox Place closed to traffic from Garden to Main Streets. Around 30 artists will be set up in various spots downtown and there will be food and drinks available on the street and in the downtown bars and restaurants.
Sydney Robinson says they are working to get a large part of the community involved in the events. “We are working with some really interesting organizations in the area, partnering with them. We’re going to have some exciting sponsor announcements coming up as well. So it’s looking like the Gallery Nights for the rest of the year, and hopefully going forward, are going to be a lot more collaborative, which is really exciting.”
Again, the first Gallery Night of the year will be Friday, July 16 in downtown Pensacola. After that, it’s August 20 and the third Friday of each month through the end of the year. More announcements about artists and performers will be made at gallerynightpensacola.org.
