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After nearly 40 years at Audubon Park, the Pink Palace Crafts Fair is returning to the Pink Palace.
The fair will be held Friday, Sept. 25, through Sunday, Sept. 27, on the lawn of the Pink Palace Museum & Mansion. One-day passes are $10 for adults and $3 for children (plus fees), while a weekend pass costs $20 (for the early-bird rate).
The fundraiser was first held in 1973. The juried event features more than 150 artisans from across the U.S., in addition to demonstrations, activities and food.
Jeff King, MoSH interim director, said much of the location shift is due to renovations at the Links at Audubon golf course. The course construction is now complete, but a clubhouse is now being constructed on what was a parking lot.
“Parking (was) in what is now the driving range,” King said.
King said the organization has a good relationship with the Memphis Parks department, which also funds MoSH, and that the department gave MoSH appropriate notice.
“It was, I think, a win-win on both sides for us to bring (the crafts fair) back to the Pink Palace,” he said.
King said the crafts fair is run by volunteers and that the pool of volunteers is getting smaller, so it was also a good time to think about the fair's scale and its long-term feasibility.
“If we didn’t scale it back, the volunteers who were executing on it were going to have a challenge continuing the fair,” he said. “And so to bring it back to the front lawn on the Pink Palace allows for us to use the infrastructure within the museum to better support it. That way we’re not just running a museum over here in one day and trying to execute a larger craft fair over here (at Audubon Park), a mile or so away. We bring it all in one place and that creates an efficiency for us too, with a volunteer group that’s continuing to get smaller.”
King, who has worked for the museum for five years, said the fair currently has about 20 to 30 volunteers.
With the event back at the Pink Palace, leaders are adding perks for ticket-buyers. Fairgoers can view the museum’s permanent collections for free. For $5 more, they can get admission to the Planetarium, Giant Screen Theater, or “Brick Dinos” exhibition. King said there would be $5 movie screenings all weekend.
Satellite parking will be available at the University of Memphis, with a shuttle between the U of M and the Pink Palace.
For someone who’s never been, King said he would tell them it’s the kind of crafts fair someone would have experienced 25-30 years ago.
“Not the kind of craft fair that exclusively that you would see now, where it’s artists with their tables,” King said. “There’s a lot of connection back to history, which is important as a history and science center at the Pink Palace. It’s really important for us to connect people back to the history related to craftsmanship, not just the crafts and goods that people have to sell.”
King described it as a celebration of fine crafts that people can purchase and be excited about, but also an opportunity to learn about the crafts: who makes them, how they’re made and what legacy they have.
King said the crafts fair is important because of its connection to local creatives and its legacy and history.
“It’s something that has a multigenerational draw,” he said. “When I talk to older Memphians, they remember coming to the Pink Palace Crafts Fair as kids. It’s something they’re excited to bring their children back for, their grandchildren back for. There’s the shared experience that is pretty unique to the Pink Palace Crafts Fair.”
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