Arriving next year is a 15-minute installation by French artist and world-renown painter Xavier de Richemont. The art video will be projected onto the façade of San Fernando Cathedral, with 7,000 square feet of light, color and visual narration.
The video offers the historical journey through the settlement of San Antonio and Bexar County, and is Main Plaza’s first outdoor video/art project.
Main Plaza, originally called "Plaza de las Islas," is nearly 300 years old and is one of only four original plazas in the U.S. - the only one with an operating cathedral.
When built by Spaniards in the late 18th Century, the whole plaza was locked in a grid, forming a cross with the church as a center. Paved over about a hundred years later, Main Plaza became a traffic hub for trolleys and wagons and later automobiles and buses until its restoration in 2008.
It has since been named as a Top 10 Great Public Space by the American Planning Association.
Since restoring the plaza, the Main Plaza Conservancy has continued to lift the charm of the plaza with cultural events, music and outdoor art.
De Richemont’s light-art designs can be seen in Germany, Spain, Morocco, Mexico, Canada, and notably, at Chartres Cathedral in France. The Main Plaza installation will be De Richemont’s first in the U.S.
Here is a preview of the 2013 Chartres en Lumière season:
