In the summer, in the city

Virginia Museum designers created a T-shirt each year for the museum's summer concert series. Most featured art from the VMFA collection, such as this 1986 version with an image of artist Barry Flanagan's "Large Leaping Hare" sculpture.

Staging an outdoor event in Richmond's notoriously sweltering summers can be tricky, as David Griffith found out back in the early 1980s.

Griffith was the head of public relations at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts when the museum began its highly successful Jumpin' in July series of Thursday-evening concerts in the Sculpture Garden. (Alas, the Jumpin' series, Griffith, and the Sculpture Garden have all since bit the dust.)

The Sculpture Garden, which opened in 1976 and was demolished during the latest expansion project, might not have been the ideal spot for a July concert series: It was a heat trap. Paved in brick, it was sunk one story below ground level. The sun baked the bricks all day long. During days like today, it was hot -- very hot -- and high brick walls and the museum's North Wing blocked any wayward breeze.

If memory serves me, it was during the second season of the series when Griffith came up with what he considered a bright idea. Late on one sweltering Thursday afternoon, he was in the garden checking on the setup. He'd only been out there for a few minutes, and sweat was pouring down his face.

Griffith's masterstroke of genius was to request the museum's maintenance department to use hoses to spray water on the bricks to cool things down.

You're probably one step ahead of the story by now. If so, you're certainly a step ahead of where Griffith was.

An hour later, at 6 p.m. when the concert began, the water had turned to steam, and the Sculpture Garden wasn't just hot: It was a sauna. Jumpin' in July that evening was a miserable experience for performers and audience alike.

The Jumpin' in July series survived, however, and became so successful that it was extended on both ends, into June and August. The museum dropped "in July" from the name, and the series came to be known simply as "Jumpin'" By its third year, and for many years thereafter, most concerts were sold out. As many as 1,800 people packed the Sculpture Garden for each event -- listening to music, socializing, drinking, and dancing.

The museum had to beef up security to prevent gate-crashing and to keep people from sneaking into the garden. (An overweight young man, wearing only the briefest of leopard-print, bikini-style bathing suits, climbed over the north wall one night; he was a fashion disaster, and the museum's security guards had no trouble spotting him in the crowd and hustling him out quickly.) Security fences had to be put up around outdoor sculptures by Aristide Maillol, Henry Moore and Alexander Calder to keep people from setting their drinks on them. Tickets had to be printed with ultraviolet coding to stop counterfeiting. The museum had to contract with a volunteer rescue squad to keep an ambulance on site each Thursday night.

At least one couple met at a Jumpin' concert and married within a year. A Virginia Air National Guard pilot was seriously disciplined for buzzing the garden in his fighter jet during a concert. (That story made the front page of the next day's paper.)

Jumpin' in July was begun as a way to entice younger people to enjoy the museum. It succeeded beyond the museum's wildest dreams. Jumpin' became the place to be and to be seen on Thursday nights.

Within a few years, Innsbrook, the Science Museum and Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden had begun their own summer concert series. But none was quite as successful as VMFA's.

Before I retired, I managed the ticket desk outside the garden gate for every one of the Jumpin' concerts. It was a job I enjoyed as much as any other during my tenure at VMFA.

The Sculpture Garden was destroyed to make way for construction of the museum's new wing, which opened last year, leaving no venue for Jumpin'.

The last concert was bittersweet.

But ... I no longer had to work at the ticket desk every Thursday evening in the hot summer sun. That was a blessed relief.