From Then to Now: Celebrating 50 years of the Norman Bird Sanctuary’s Harvest Fair

2024 is a big year for the Norman Bird Sanctuary (NBS). This year marks the 75^th anniversary of the sanctuary’s founding, and it also marks fifty years since Norman Bird Sanctuary’s first Harvest Fair. 

Hosting a large fair is no walk in the garden – especially considering the Harvest Fair has become a staple for the entire Aquidneck Island community. “As soon as one ends, I start planning for the next one,” says Bayley Forshee, the sanctuary’s development manager. The fair spreads across fields, large event tents, gardens, partially down some of the trails, and, this year, the fair spills into the NBS Barn. The NBS team had to do something special for the 50^th anniversary of the beloved fair, so to mark the occasion, they turned history into an attraction. 

In the NBS Barn, the team developed an archival exhibition of Harvest Fairs past. Hanging along the right wall are rows of documentary photographs by artist Salvatore Lopez. An internationally renowned photographer and platinum printer, Lopez was a young artist in Newport in the 70s. He attended fair several times and produced a two-year documentary series of the third and fourth Harvest Fairs in 1976 and 1977, respectively.   

Along the left wall are silkscreen print recreations of original Harvest Fair posters from 1974-1981 by Tom Casselman. All but one of the posters are in full color; the outlier is a happy racoon print from ’77. The original Casselman was working with to create a new poster was in “rough shape.” It “looked like a truck ran over it,” Casselman describes, splattered with mud, browned with age and dirt, and peppered with small rocks. To recreate it at all, he requested the help of a friend who was “good with technology” and who had the skills to digitally restore some of the lost features so he could make an approximate print recreation. 

In the center of the Barn are displays of past Harvest Fair evidence – photo reels, newspaper prints, and articles that from the 70s and 80s. On September 18, the opening night of the exhibit, executive director of the Norman Bird Sanctuary Kaity Ryan called the documents in the Barn “a testament to that legacy” of chili cook-offs, garden competitions, field games, and all of the Norman Bird Sanctuary volunteers and workers who have kept the Harvest Fair a lynchpin of the community for fifty years. The photographs and posters are available for purchase, and the sanctuary encourages everyone to stop at the Barn to help identify the people documented in the photographs so the sanctuary can archive that information and honor all who have enjoyed the Harvest Fair so many years ago. The exhibition can be viewed daily until December 2, 2024. 

Anna Turner, the research and collections coordinator of the sanctuary, joked that even though she had been to only a few Harvest Fairs, she could still recognize the fun scenes depicted in the photographs, “minus the cigarettes, the dogs, and the balloons” that were popular fifty years ago. 

Indeed, this year’s Harvest Fair has it all: hayrides, tractor rides, the classic mud fights and greased pole, an egg toss, potato sack races, fair games, food trucks, live music, a Crafter’s Tent, a judged bake-off and garden displays, pumpkin painting, and a scarecrow contest.

Looking through the camera lens, there isn’t such a big difference between then (the 70s) and now. The sanctuary grounds are still filled with classic autumn-themed field day fun, and, young or old, there is still plenty of action, smiling faces, and laughter to go around. The Harvest Fair continues to succeed at what it always was about: a source of community connection and simple, great fun.   

Photo Gallery

On Saturday, October 5, 2024, Ruthie Wood captured the following photos for What’sUpNewp from the 50th Norman Bird Sanctuary Harvest Fair.