On view July 19 – September 14, 2025
Downtown Sarasota campus
The Museum of Botany & the Arts
Flock to Selby Gardens this summer for our newest exhibition, The High Life: Contemporary Photography and the Birds, running from July 19 to September 14, 2025, 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 Museum of Botany & the Arts and outside throughout the gardens, where art will mirror 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®.