SARASOTA, FL., June 16, 2025 – Marie Selby Botanical Gardens is pleased to announce its summer exhibition, The High Life: Contemporary Photography and the Birds, on view at Selby Gardens’ Downtown Sarasota campus, July 19 through September 14, 2025.
A press & media preview will be held on Thursday, July 17 from 9-11:00 a.m.
Selby Gardens is world renowned for its outstanding plant collections, but it is also a great place to observe ospreys, egrets, herons, and other birds that call Sarasota home. More than 160 bird species have been documented at the Downtown Sarasota campus.
Organized by the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography and curated by photography experts William Ewing and Danaé Panchaud, the exhibition will feature some 70 works by more than 50 photographers from around the world. The works will be presented in the galleries of the Richard and Ellen Sandor Museum of Botany & The Arts and outside throughout the gardens, where art mirrors nature in unique and unexpected ways.
Birds have long fascinated, perplexed, and inspired human beings. These captivating subjects have also featured in photographs throughout the nearly 200-year history of photography. Some of the contemporary photographers represented in the exhibition specialize in the photography of birds. Others have only occasionally captured images of birds, and a few have done so merely by chance. The resulting combination of images provides a rich and varied perspective on the subject.
The Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography was founded by Todd Brandow in 2003. Based in Minneapolis, this non-profit organization has produced shows on a variety of subjects that have travelled to more than 30 countries on four continents over the past two decades. The High Life is the second collaboration between the foundation and Selby Gardens. The first was the Flora Imaginaria exhibition, featuring the flower in contemporary photography, held in the summer of 2022. Birds and flowers have a mutually beneficial relationship, with the former serving as pollinators and the latter as sources of food. Both subjects are particularly appropriate for Selby Gardens, where art inspired by and presented in nature is at the heart of The Living Museum®.
Jennifer Rominiecki, President & CEO of Selby Gardens stated, “Selby Gardens has always celebrated the beauty and diversity of the natural world—from our world-renowned plant collections to the incredible birdlife of Sarasota. The High Life exhibition invites visitors to experience both through the lens of contemporary photography, highlighting the vital connection between art, nature, and conservation.”