Selby Gardens' New Exhibit Is for the Birds
Image: Luke Stephenson
We all know that Selby Gardens is world-renowned for its natural beauty, plant collections, research and architecture—but it's also a great place to bird-watch. Ospreys, egrets, herons and numerous feathered friends all call Sarasota home, and more than 160 bird species have been documented at Selby Gardens' downtown Sarasota campus.
So it makes sense that the gardens' summer exhibition is titled The High Life: Contemporary Photography and the Birds. Organized by the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography and curated by William Ewing and Danaé Panchaud, the exhibition will feature roughly 70 images by more than 50 photographers from around the world. The pieces will be hung in the galleries of the Richard and Ellen Sandor Museum of Botany & The Arts, and also dotted outside, throughout the gardens.
The images in the exhibit provide a varied perspective on birds and birding from a variety of viewpoints. Some of the contemporary photographers represented in the exhibition specialize in bird photography; others have occasionally captured bird imagery; and a few photographers have snapped an avian image in a moment of pure luck.
The High Life is the second collaboration between Selby Gardens and the Minneapolis-based Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography, which was founded by photographer Todd Brandow in 2003. (The first was the Flora Imaginaria exhibition, featuring flowers in contemporary photography, in the summer of 2022.) It makes sense: Birds and flowers have a mutually beneficial relationship, with our feathered friends serving as pollinators and flowers as their sources of food.
"The High Life exhibition invites visitors to experience both through the lens of contemporary photography, highlighting the vital connection between art, nature, and conservation," Jennifer Jennifer Rominiecki, president and CEO of Selby Gardens, said in a press release.
The High Life: Contemporary Photography and the Birds will be on view at Selby Gardens’ downtown Sarasota campus from July 19, 2025, to September 14, 2025.
