Lindsborg Posten: What to Do

 
Posten
June 2023
 
 
Midsummer's Festival
Saturday, June 17
Celebrated in Lindsborg, Kansas on Saturday, June 17, Midsummer’s Festival, the most Swedish of all traditional festivities, is always a fun-filled day for the entire family, including a 5K Run & 2-Mile Walk (beginning at 8:30am), Kubb Tournament (registration begins at 11:00am), Swedish Dancing, craft demonstrations, food vendors (including the Lindsborg Swedish Folkdancersserving Viking-on-a-Stick), Vikings, and even Surströmming – the Stinky Fish Eating Contest.
Celebrate all day at Riverside Park, located at 500 S. 1st Street. 
Check the Visit Lindsborg website for up-to-date information on all Midsummer festivities!
11th Midsummer's Festival Kubb Tournament
June 17
Kubb (pronounced koob) is a traditional Nordic game played in Europe. U.S. Tournaments continue to grow and are drawing hundreds of players from numerous states. Kubb is an easy to learn lawn game that has been played for over 1,000 years. Invented (reportedly) by the Vikings, Kubb can be described as a combination of bowling, bocce and horseshoes. The object of the game is to knock over opposing team’s kubbs and the King, before they knock over yours. The king rules all...if a team knocks over the king before the end of the game, they lose. Form a team and join in the Midsummer's Festival fun! Perfect for any age!
Registration begins at 11:00am. Play begins at 12:00pm with four rounds guaranteed! A fee of $25 per team (2-3 persons to a team) is required.
Registration Deadline: June 15, 2023
Download registration form here.
Learn more about Midsummer's Day activities here.
Learn how to play Kubb here.
The Kubb Tournament will be held in Heritage Square located at the Lindsborg Old Mill and Swedish Heritage Museum complex 120 E. Mill Street.
Midsommarsdag Sång Fest
Sunday, June 18
On Sunday, June 18, 2:30 pm, all are welcome to gather at Bethany Lutheran Church to sing favorite Swedish hymns and hear the history behind these beautiful songs. There will be a reception following the sång fest.
Bethany Lutheran is located at 320 N. Main Street.
3rd Annual Community Exhibition
Smoky Valley Arts and Folklife Center
May 19-June 25
Smoky Valley Arts & Folklife Center's annual Community Exhibition is back, showcasing incredible artwork created by people in the Lindsborg community.
This special exhibition features a wide range of art forms and materials as well as a wide range of artist ages. From high school students to hobbyists to professional artists, beautiful ceramics, stunning fiber art, intricate wood carvings, dazzling jewelry, and even colorful stained glass are displayed.
Smoky Valley Arts and Folklife Center hours are Friday - Sunday, 1:00pm-5:00pm. Location is 114 1/2 S. Main Street. Smoky Valley Arts & Folklife Center is supported by the Kansas Creative Arts Industries Commission, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Raymer Society.
Michael Knutson, Artist-in-Residence
Red Barn Studio Museum
June 8-20
Michael Knutson will be the artist-in-residence at the Red Barn Studio Museum. A 2-D Art Instructor at Garden City Community College, Knutson grew up in the Black Hills of South Dakota, where both parents were art educators. The natural environment around him provided inspiration and sparked creativity from a young age.
Knutson earned his Bachelor of Arts from Black Hills State University in 2010 and completed his MFA at Fort Hays State University in 2013. He is an accomplished visual artist, primarily working as a painter. Knutson has an active national exhibition record of solo and group shows and has completed many public art commissions for institutions such as the Sternberg Museum of Natural History.
The foundation of Michael's work is a deep connection to his immediate environment, life experiences, and the way his mind interprets this information. He works both in the studio and in the landscape, allowing him to explore a wide range of physical and emotional experiences. Michael encourages exploration, searching for cinematic scenes with a strong sense of impending drama.
Knutson's residency at the Red Barn Studio Museum will take place from June 8th - 20th, overlapping with Lindsborg's Midsummer Festival weekend on June 17th. As an artist-in-residence, Knutson will have the opportunity to work on new projects and engage with the local community. Visitors to the museum can expect to see his unique perspective on nature and life experiences reflected in his work.
The Red Barn Studio Museum's residency program is sponsored in part by the Kansas Creative Arts Industry Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts. The Red Barn Studio Museum is located at 212 South Main Street and is open Tuesday-Friday, 10:00am-5:00pm and Saturday and Sunday, 1:00pm-5:00pm, and by appointment. Please call (785) 227-2217 to schedule an appointment.
Power to the People Exhibition
Plus Additional Exhibitions
Birger Sandzén Memorial Gallery
June 18 - August 6
Five new exhibitions open at the Birger Sandzén Memorial Gallery on June 18 and continue through August 6. The shows include Mexican art from the Moffett Collection; paintings and prints by Doug Osa of Olathe; art by Kelly Yarbrough and Clive Fullagar of Manhattan; and mixed media works by Ellinwood artist Robert Joy, who passed away this past March. The opening reception for the exhibitions will be on Sunday, June 18 from 2:00-4:00pm, with artist talks at 2:30pm.
Drawing on work from the James and Virginia Moffett Collection, Power to the People explores the political and social conditions of early-20th-century Mexico and the dynamic, groundbreaking art that emerged from the Mexican Revolution (1910 – 1920). This period of war and dramatic social upheaval witnessed a flowering of artistic production, particularly in printmaking and graphic arts. Mexico’s long printmaking tradition dates to the late 1500s. Artists such as José Guadalupe Posada, Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros – icons of Mexican modernism – drew on those traditions and everyday imagery to create new messages of social justice meant to appeal directly to the working classes in the Mexican provinces. The exhibition is curated by Cori Sherman North from the Sandzén Gallery and her husband Bill North of the Clara Hatton Center.
Quiet Perceptions features the art of Kansas native and Olathe resident Doug Osa. Early in his career, he began working directly from both urban and rural landscape settings. His choice of subjects are not so much sought after as they are discovered, sometimes in the most unlikely places. This selective process often takes place through multiple visits to painting locations throughout the seasons and years. His desire is to seek the underlying order and beauty of those things observed and to capture that “sense of place” in those observations. His work is especially appreciated for its meticulous detail and coloration and is included in private, corporate and institutional collections nationwide.
Manhattan, Kansas, artist Kelly Yarbrough's practice is rooted in an ecosystem that includes mixed media drawing, arts administration, and creating meaningful opportunities for humans to engage with their environment. She writes, "My art focuses on the prairie ecosystem and presenting views of place through an ever-expanding library of my lived experiences. The tallgrass prairie is called the most altered landscape on the planet, yet grasslands tell incredible stories of human history and their re-establishment can offer hope for the future of life in the Great Plains. The work in Folkways is new and a detour from the largely abstracted style that I've been working with for the past ten years. I wanted to more directfully (but playfully) represent people, actions, and traditions that I've encountered along the way while living in Kansas. Folkways are defined as learned behaviors, shared by a social group, built up without conscious design but serving as compelling guides of conduct."
Since emigrating from South Africa to Kansas in 1988, most of Clive Fullagar's work has been derived from his love of the Flint Hills. He has been very fortunate to be able to record both the dramatic and subtle changes to the landscape brought about by the seasons, weather, light, and human impact. Sometimes these changes are fleeting, occurring in minutes and requiring a continuous presence in place. Fullagar writes, "Most of the work that I am presenting in Finding Roots: Divisionism Revisited is based on the root systems of trees left stranded on a man-made beach in the Tuttle Cove area near Manhattan. The pieces use mixed media and digital tools to explore Divisionism, a style which Birger Sandzén explored through paint. Divisionism emphasized the separation of color into individual shapes or strokes of pigment to enhance the effect of light. The divergence in our work lies in the means and process by which we achieve luminosity." Whereas much of Sandzén’s work used a panoramic view of the landscape, Fullagar adopts a more microscopic lens to expose the intimate structure of the land.
Robert Joy (1943-2023) was an icon in the Great Bend art scene for many years and developed a dedicated following throughout the region. Although he lived in Ellinwood, he regularly commuted to his workspace at Petr's Frame House and later the Shafer Gallery at Barton Community College. He developed his well-known style with the realization that drawing is a lot like writing, "I hadn’t gone to college to hone my handwriting skills, but it was certainly my own style and I didn’t have to work at anything special to produce it. I just moved my pen on a paper and there it was without the slightest effort. Why couldn’t I just do the same thing in drawing and painting? So I just simply started drawing and all the magic began to happen. My brain, with all its crazy way of seeing things, just locked on to that freedom and off I went." His uniquely framed subject matter ranges from cats and nature to his experiences in the Vietnam War and more.
The Sandzén Gallery is located at 401 North First Street in Lindsborg. Hours are 10:00am-5:00pm Tuesday through Saturday, and 1:00pm-5:00pm on Sunday. Admission is free, with donations appreciated. Docent tours for groups are available by two-week advance appointment. For more information about Birger Sandzén, the Gallery, and these exhibitions visit the Gallery's website or phone (785) 227-2220.
Jenny Lind Concert
June 26
Photos: Rebecka Elsgard & Josefine Mindus
Performers are the recipients of the Jenny Lind Scholarship, an annual competition that aims to discover an exciting young soprano who already displays the promise of a future major opera and/or concert career. Lindsborg is a stop along the tour that performs at numerous metropolitan venues.
Jenny Lind was known as the Swedish Nightingale and was one of the most highly regarded singers of the 19th century. In 1850, she gave 93 large-scale concerts at the invitation and coordination of P. T. Barnum.
Since 1965, the Folkets Hus och Parker and The Royal Academy of Musichave appointed a Jenny Lind Scholar who has toured in both Sweden and North America. This year, the Jenny Lind Scholar singer is Soprano Josefine Mindus. Her musical accompanist is Rebecka Elsgard.
This year's concert will be June 26 at 7:00pm at the Bethany Lutheran Church located at 320 N. Main St. Other stops for the tour include San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Boston to name a few.
A Swedish Fika sponsored by the American Scandinavian Association of the Great Plains will be served following the concert.
Sponsored in part by the Lindsborg Arts Council, admission is free with donations accepted.
Click on Visit Lindsborg for additional information.
Farmers Market
Saturdays, 7:30-11:00am
The Lindsborg Farmers Market is held every Saturday morning 7:30-11:00am at Swensson Park, located in the 400 block of North Main Street.
Many types of produce will be for sale from local vendors, including garden produce and pecans. Farm products like honey and eggs will also be available as well as baked goods and even woodworking, plants and much more. Live entertainment enhances many Saturday mornings!
All vendors are welcome to set up and sell produce. Bring your own table and start selling. This weekly event and more found on the Visit Lindsborg Calendar of Events.
Lawn and Garden Tour
June 25
Smoky Valley Arts and Folklife Center
Celebrate summer in the Smoky Valley at the Lawn & Garden Tour hosted by the Smoky Valley Arts and Folklife Center on Sunday, June 25, from 4:00-7:00pm.
The Garden Tour features beautiful and unique Lindsborg lawns including:
  • Vern & Linda Hubalek with featured artist Verne Hubalek
  • Ed & Jane Radatz with featured artist Ron Michael
  • Liz Strnad with featured artist Darren
  • Marsha & Brad Howe with featured artist Debbie Wagoner
  • Bill & Sharon Christopher with featured artist Lloyd Rohr
Come to SVAFC from 2:00-4:00pm on June 25 for the closing reception of the Community Art Exhibit and to pick up your tickets for the tour!
Tickets can be purchased online for $25 until the day of the tour and picked up at Smoky Valley Arts and Folklife Center on Sunday, June 25 – the day of the tour until 5 p.m. Tickets can also be purchased the day of the tour for $30 at Smoky Valley Arts and Folklife Center. Tickets will need to be shown at each home.
More information including guidelines for the tour found at Visit Lindsborg or on the Smoky Valley Arts and Folklife Center's website.
SVAFC hours are Friday - Sunday, 1:00pm-5:00pm. Location is 114 1/2 S. Main Street. Smoky Valley Arts & Folklife Center is supported by the Kansas Creative Arts Industries Commission, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Raymer Society.
One-Day Itinerary in Lindsborg, Kansas
Give Lindsborg a Test-Run
From 9:00am to 5:30pm, One Delightful Life has mapped a day of adventure if you've never been to Lindsborg! Plan a trip, and see why "visitors from Scandinavia often say this town feels more Swedish than Sweden."
After a day visit, you will see why visitors plan a return trip to Little Sweden as there is so much more to discover! Be sure to explore the Visit Lindsborg website for festivities and a calendar of events. Then plan that trip!
Friends of Lindsborg Library Book Sale
June 12-17
Lindsborg Community Library
The Annual Book Sale held at Lindsborg Community Library will begin June 12-16 during library hours (10:00am-6:00pm) and Saturday, June 17(Midsummer's Festival) during library hours (10:00am-2:00pm). The Book Sale, sponsored by the Friends of Lindsborg Library, will be held in the newly purchased building right next to the library, 109 S. Main Street. While there, see the plans for the library's expansion!
Other library programming for the month of June:
  • A Creative Guide to Writing Your Family's History--presented by Kim Stanley, Professor of English and chair of the Department of Modern Languages at McPherson College. Stanley is a speaker from Humanities Kansas which provides a conversation that moves beyond partisanship to explore stories and ideas that will enrich our communities and strengthen our democracy. Saturday June 24, 10:30am.
  • Summer Story Time--for families with children 5 and younger with flexible guidance through story time, play time, and music time. Tuesdays 10:00-11:15am
  • Story Time Plus--for families with children 5 and younger with more in-depth or messy activities. Thursdays 10:00-11:15am
  • Age specific programming--check with Lindsborg Community Libraryfor program and activity details
  • Monday afternoons 2:00-3:30--programs and activities for 7th-12th graders
  • Wednesday afternoons 2:00-3:30pm--programs and activities for 3rd-6th graders
  • Thursday afternoons 4:00-5:00pm--programs and activities for K-6th graders
The Summer Reading Program begins May 30 with booklets filled with self-paced activities, challenges, and reading to complete for those 6th grade and younger. For teens and adults, grab a BINGO board challenge. Prize drawings at the end of June and July for participants from both age groups.
A complete library schedule including Summer Reading programming can be found by calling the Lindsborg Community Library or clicking on their Facebook page.
Lindsborg Community Library (Bibliotek) is located in the heart of downtown at
111 South Main Street. Hours are Monday - Friday, 10:00am-6:00pm and Saturday, 10:00am-2:00pm.
Sunflower Summer
Make Summertime Memories!
Making memories with the kiddos doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg! Did you know that the Sunflower Summer app, developed by the Kansas Department of Education, gives students (K-12) and parents the opportunity to explore dozens of attractions across the state, FOR FREE? This app will allow families to explore participating locations, make some memories, have a blast, and maybe even learn a thing or two along the way. 
Locations in Lindsborg participating in the program:
  • Red Barn Studio Museum
  • Lindsborg Old Mill and Swedish Heritage Museum
Click here for details.
Don't forget: the Sunflower Summer program's season is May 26 - August 13, 2023, so plan your trips soon!
Old-Fashioned 4th of July
Plan Ahead!
July 4th
The first Tuesday in July is Independence Day!
Reserve that date for a trip to Lindsborg to celebrate with a small town celebration in Swensson Park, featuring a talent show, walking parade, and the city band!
Details are being planned, so be sure to check out the Visit Lindsborg website!
Broadway RFD
Brigadoon
July 21 & 22, 28 & 29
Another must-see event in Lindsborg! Mark your calendars for Broadway RFD's production of Brigadoon.
The Broadway musical hit the big screen in 1954 with Gene Kelly, Van Johnson, and Cyd Charisee in starring roles. The story's synopsis from IMDB:
Americans Jeff and Tommy, hunting in Scotland, stumble upon a village - Brigadoon. They soon learn that the town appears once every 100 years in order to preserve its peace and special beauty. The citizens go to bed at night and when they wake up, it's 100 years later. Tommy falls in love with a beautiful young woman, Fiona, and is torn between staying or, as Jeff is encouraging him, going back to his hectic life in New York.
Tickets for the production will be available for purchase July 1. See Broadway RFD for ticket purchase information.

Lindsborg Five-Star Stays
Safety with Our Guests in Mind
Stenhuset: Stunningly Updated 1988 Stone House w/ Kitchen
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Virginia, Mar 2023 - Loved it!They did a wonderful job with decor and comfort.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Nick, Dec 2022 – What a gem! We loved everything about this place! Cozy, meticulously restored, short walk to downtown. Great hosts too. Highly recommend!
Find links to your favorite overnight stays here.

 

 
Find a current calendar of events here.
Download your copy of the Lindsborg Visitors Guide here, or contact the CVB office at cvbdir@lindsborgcity.org or 888.227.2227 to ask for a guide to be mailed to you or a friend.
888-227-2227
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