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Effective June 15, California has new “Mega Event” rules which may give us some clues of where covid restrictions are headed for art shows in California and other states as well.  According to the Orange County Register:

1. “Under the latest state guidelines, mega events that draw large crowds are broken into two categories — indoor events with more than 5,000 attendees or outdoor events with more than 10,000 people.”
2. “Outdoor mega events include theme parks, sporting events, concerts, music or food festivals, car shows, marathons and parades. Indoor mega events include sporting events, concerts, conventions and conferences.”
3. “Vaccine and negative COVID-19 test verifications are recommended for outdoor mega events and required for indoor mega events under the new Beyond the Blueprint restrictions. “
4. “Outdoor mega events are strongly recommended to verify that visitors have been fully vaccinated for coronavirus or received a recent negative COVID-19 test.”
5. “Indoor mega events are required to verify that visitors have been fully vaccinated or tested.”

Assuming that arts and crafts shows are included, these rules will apply to all large arts and crafts shows in California, and similar rules may be enacted in other states.  Which makes me wonder:

• Florida now prohibits the use of COVID-19 vaccine verification, so restricting arts and crafts fair attendees to only the vaccinated is illegal. Other states may have similar statutes or orders.  If Florida enacted California’s rules for Mega Events, the only attendees allowed into indoor shows would be those with recent negative test results.  I don’t think very many people will go to the trouble of getting a blood test in order to visit an art or crafts show.
• I wonder what “strongly recommended” means (see (4) above). Does it mean that government authorities will strongly object to shows that have no way of verifying that visitors have been fully vaccinated for coronavirus or received a recent negative COVID-19 test?  Will that include making permits difficult or impossible to obtain, or advising potential attendees to stay away?

I worry that Covid restrictions are not going away, they are just changing.  Although the new rules may make large arts and crafts shows possible without social distancing requirements, they may keep attendance so low as to not make them profitable.  That is why it would be so interesting to hear how well actual shows worked out from an artist’s perspective, such as Artisphere.