Museum of Boulder and volunteers begin preserving King Soopers shooting memorial
BOULDER, Colo. — More than two months after a gunman opened fire at the Table Mesa King Soopers in Boulder, killing 10 people, the community is coming together to take down and preserve the memorial set up outside the grocery store.
After the shooting, mourners placed hundreds of flowers, cards, signs and other remembrances on a fence near the grocery store.
The Museum of Boulder announced in March it would preserve the memorial items through their “Boulder Strong Project.” Starting June 1, the museum and the City of Boulder began removing the signs and artwork to begin the preservation project.
"It's deeply sad, and it's hard to think about the lives that were lost," said Chelsea Pennington Hahn, the curator of collections at Museum of Boulder. "Seeing everything that people have left, is really powerful. Boulder is such a creative city, and so to see all the ways that's been expressed on the fence is really lovely."
The removal part of the project will continue until June 4. Volunteers looking to help can sign up here.
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"There's a lot of feelings. You can see the time that's passed," said a woman removing wilting flowers from the fence outside King Soopers. "But I'm so happy they're preserving it."
Items like flowers will be composted, while the art, signs, and similar items will be categorized and moved into storage. The Museum of Boulder has not decided yet whether it will display the items or archive them behind the scenes. Staff at the Museum of Boulder has been in contact with museums in Orlando and Las Vegas, two cities that have experienced horrific mass shootings in recent years, in order to learn more about these types of preservation projects.
In addition to the memorials, community members have participated in multiple vigils since the shooting.
On March 25, hundreds gathered for a vigil at Boulder's Fairview High School to honor the victims and decry gun violence. "There are 10 empty spaces in our hearts," a speaker said.
Julio Sandoval is a multimedia journalist at Rocky Mountain PBS. You can reach him at juliosandoval@rmpbs.org.