Press Room

That’s a wrap! The last reverberations from the final toll of the 2022 National Bell Festival have rippled across the skies. We couldn’t be more excited about all we shared, experienced, and learned at BellFest this year.

It all began in Australia. At midnight local time on New Year’s Eve (that’s a very early 8:00am for us in Washington, D.C.), the Bathurst War Memorial Carillon erupted into sound. Following the strokes of midnight, Carillonneur Denise Garland played a stirring arrangement of “Auld Lang Syne” on the 47 tower bells.

This New Year’s Eve, the first-ever Ring around the World will invite bells to resound in an international moment of unity and celebration. At midnight local time on Dec. 31, 2021, bells are set to toll the hour in Bathurst, Australia, before Carillonneur Denise Garland plays a stirring arrangement of “Auld Lang Syne” from the 47-bell Bathurst War Memorial Carillon.

At noon on New Year’s Day 2022, a solitary bell will ring 200 times at the Military Women’s Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery to mark the years since the birth of Harriet Tubman. While her exact date and location of birth is disputed, many scholars record the year as 1822, based on a midwife payment and several other historical documents. 

The Israel Antiquities Authority has published findings from a recent submarine survey, bringing to light a ship’s cargo that sank nearly 1,700 years ago. The scattered findings suggest the ship went down in a powerful storm or explosion sometime during the mid-third or early fourth century in the waters off Caesarea. Caesarea was a major port city built by Herod the Great around 25 BCE on Israel’s Mediterranean coast. A shattered iron anchor found in the debris field gives silent testimony to the ship’s violent demise. 

With the third annual National Bell Festival just two weeks away, we’re thrilled to announce the 2022 Official Festival Artist: Virginia-based landscape and urban photographer Daniel Horowitz.

Mr. Horowitz, who resides across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. in Alexandria, Virginia, focuses on discovering unusual scenes in and around the capital region, the Chesapeake, and the northeastern United States. 

Not one, but two full peal attempts will be happening this New Year’s weekend! The Washington Ringing Society has announced a second full peal attempt will be added to their calendar – and we couldn’t be more excited! That’s more bells ringing in more places, which is something we at the National Bell Festival love.

In just one month, the third annual National Bell Festival returns with the privilege of ringing in the New Year. This year’s community festival will be our most thundering yet! With bells ringing across Washington, D.C. at our festival hub, across America in our coast-to-coast ringing, and across the globe in our first-ever Ring around the World event.

When a neighbor needs help, you help them. That’s why, when the Military Women’s Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery mentioned they needed some help readying their museum and education center for upcoming renovations, we at the National Bell Festival leapt into action with a lending hand.

When St. Bernadette Church in Springfield, Virginia, was dedicated in 1981, parishioners delighted in the contemporary architectural stylings that would form their new spiritual refuge. A massive 4,900-pound block of split, natural wood, supported on a thick foundation of steel-reinforced concrete, would serve as the new altar. His Holiness Pope John Paul II had celebrated Mass on the National Mall at the same altar two years before.

Fallout continues after the October 2021 publication of the Pandora Papers, a cache of almost 12 million documents obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. The documents provide a glimpse into a shadow financial system that benefits the world’s richest and most powerful individuals – including art dealer Douglas Latchford, who was indicted in 2019 by U.S. prosecutors after decades of alleged trafficking in looted antiquities.