Michelle Obama may have stolen most of the headlines last week when she was announced as the honorary chair of next year’s bigger, better National Cherry Blossom Festival. But if you ask me, I’m just as excited about the involvement of Peter Max, who was announced the same day as the official artist of the Festival’s 2012 Centennial Celebration.

Max — whose psychedelic work this editor has had a fondness for since his art intersected with my then-raging passion for baseball cards in the late ’90s — produced the official poster to advertise the festival, which is a trippy vision into what the what the cherry blossom would look like if it was a setting in Yellow Submarine.

Of course, Max’s isn’t the only high-profile art which will be involved in the Festival’s celebration — the National Gallery of Art has plans to curate an exhibit of 30 Japanese scroll paintings which have never been seen outside Japan, and the U.S. Postal Service will offer a commemorative cherry blossom stamp designed by Paul Rogers and Phil Jordan.

Next year’s Festival is currently scheduled to run from March 20 through April 27.