{"id":419385,"date":"2026-10-05T17:24:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-05T17:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/419385\/"},"modified":"2026-10-05T17:24:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T17:24:09","slug":"arts-guide-2026-27-best-south-florida-art-exhibits-this-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/419385\/","title":{"rendered":"Arts Guide 2026-27: Best South Florida art exhibits this season"},"content":{"rendered":"

As part of our 2026 Guide to the Arts in PRIME Magazine, entertainment writer Phillip Valys offers his Critic\u2019s Picks for the best visual arts exhibits coming up in South Florida. Want to see the full issue? Go to SunSentinel.com\/prime<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2018This Land We Share: Celebrating 250 Years of America\u2019<\/p>\n

Through Nov. 30, 2026, at Big Cypress Gallery, 52388 Tamiami Trail E., Ochopee<\/a>, 239-695-2428, ClydeButcher.com\/exhibits<\/a><\/p>\n

With his trademark silver beard and infinite patience, guardian of the swamp Clyde Butcher has lived in and photographed Florida\u2019s Everglades for decades, always in black-and-white, always up close. The conservationist icon is known for wading into the grassy marshes and water lilies of Big Cypress National Preserve with his large-format cameras, cowboy hat and khakis, waiting until the sun catches the banyan trees just right to capture the quiet power of nature\u2019s glory. But in \u201cThis Land We Share,\u201d a new survey honoring America\u2019s 250th anniversary, the 84-year-old trades the swampland for the nation\u2019s forests, coastlines, wetlands, mountains and deserts. Here, we see a skylight from the floor of Arizona\u2019s Antelope Canyon, the fog-shrouded forests over Idaho\u2019s Redfish Lake, dark clouds gathering over South Dakota\u2019s Badlands, and the summit of El Capitan framed behind Californian trees. The show is on view at Butcher\u2019s Big Cypress Gallery on Tamiami Trail in Ochopee (about an hour west of Miami), which is a worthy trek into nature for breathtakingly epic images filled with gratitude for the country\u2019s unspoiled wilderness.<\/p>\n

\"Joel<\/p>\n

Collection NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, Gift of Joel Meyerowitz \/ Courtesy<\/p>\n

“The North Wall, New York City, 2001″ is featured in \u201cJoel Meyerowitz: Aftermath,” on view through February at NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale. (Collection NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, Gift of Joel Meyerowitz\/Courtesy)
\n\u2018Joel Meyerowitz: Aftermath\u2019<\/p>\n

Through Feb. 14, 2027, at NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, 1 E. Las Olas Blvd., Fort Lauderdale<\/a>, 954-525-5500, NSUArtMuseum.org<\/a><\/p>\n

In the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Mayor Rudy Giuliani shut down the Ground Zero site to everyone except emergency personnel. After persistent negotiation with city officials, New York photographer Joel Meyerowitz was let in to document the mass of rubble, broken buildings, steel and glass. The result are thousands of agile photographs of destruction and heroic recovery, all painterly and dutifully somber like the moment he\u2019s capturing, which have been culled to 28 large-scale images now on display at the NSU Art Museum. Versions of Meyerowitz\u2019s \u201cAftermath: World Trade Center Archive\u201d have been touring globally since 2002. But these 28 particular photos are part of a donation that Meyerowitz made to the museum in 2025 to teach new generations about resiliency and healing after national trauma.<\/p>\n

\"P\u00e9rez<\/p>\n

P\u00e9rez Art Museum Miami \/ Courtesy<\/p>\n

P\u00e9rez Art Museum Miami is showing “Basquiat: Figures, Signs, Symbols” through June 2027. (P\u00e9rez Art Museum Miami\/Courtesy)
\n\u2018Basquiat: Figures, Signs, Symbols\u2019<\/p>\n

Through June 6, 2027, at P\u00e9rez Art Museum Miami, 1103 Biscayne Blvd., Miami<\/a>, 305-375-3000, PAMM.org<\/a><\/p>\n

Billed as the largest showing of Basquiats in Florida, this showcase features 10 massive masterworks from the late urban-art eccentric whose celebrity and visual style exploded in the 1980s before his death, at age 27, in 1988. Anti-capitalist visions of racial identity, class and urban street life are common themes in these paintings, which remix comic books, graffiti, corporate logos, hip-hop aesthetics and fashion. All 10 works \u2014 nine canvases and a sculpture \u2014 are on loan from Kenneth C. Griffin, a hedge-fund billionaire who bought them over the past six years and estimates their combined value at $500 million. They include \u201cPez Dispenser,\u201d a 1984 painting of a crown-wearing dinosaur, and \u201cUntitled,\u201d a graffiti-inspired skull that, according to the online art market Artnet<\/a>, Griffin snagged for $200 million alone.<\/p>\n

\"Mimi<\/p>\n

High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of Lucas Foglia \/ Courtesy<\/p>\n

“Treasure Island” (2020) is featured in \u201cBlazing Light: Photographs by Mimi Plumb,\u201d opening this fall at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach. (High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of Lucas Foglia\/Courtesy)
\n\u2018Blazing Light: Photographs by Mimi Plumb\u2019<\/p>\n

Oct. 31, 2026-March 14, 2027 at Norton Museum of Art, 1450 S. Dixie Highway, West Palm Beach<\/a>, 561-832-5196, Norton.org<\/a><\/p>\n

For more than\u00a050 years, Mimi Plumb has cultivated a sense of doom with her images of social strife, environmental emergencies, and the anxieties of a world falling apart. In her photographs, the instability is never in your face; it lurks slightly out of frame, brimming with tension. And now, many decades of Plumb\u2019s work (1972-2025) have been collected for \u201cBlazing Light,\u201d a new 100-photo touring show full of clear-eyed visions burning with prophesy. Just look, for example, at \u201cTreasure Island\u201d (2020), where a colonial mansion resembles a fragile dollhouse under the looping concrete of a freeway overpass. Or \u201cTraveling to the Receding Lake II\u201d (2022), where young girls tow a cooler and an inflatable to a near-dry lakebed in the middle of a drought. Or look further back in Plumb\u2019s career to \u201cCrowd and Fire\u201d (1976), where bystanders climb rocks to glimpse a distant fire \u2014 a scene that underscores her consistent focus on showing a country out of balance.<\/p>\n

\"Robots<\/p>\n

AP Photo\/Markus Schreiber<\/p>\n

Robots in the likeness of Elon Musk, foreground, and Jeff Bezos, left, are displayed at the installation titled “Regular Animals” by the artist Beeple, which was a viral hit when it debuted at Art Basel Miami Beach 2025. (AP Photo\/Markus Schreiber)
\nArt Basel Miami Beach\/Miami Art Week<\/p>\n

Dec. 4-6 at Miami Beach Convention Center, 1901 Convention Center Drive<\/a>, 786-276-2600, ArtBasel.com\/Miami-Beach<\/a><\/p>\n

In case you think only multimillionaire art collectors go to Art Basel anymore, think again: Huge crowds gathered for Beeple\u2019s \u201cRegular Animals\u201d in 2025, a point made virally clear by the multitudes of social videos<\/a> of flesh-colored robot dogs rumbling in the ring wearing the lifelike faces of personalities including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg. (The dogs snapped images of the masses and \u201cpooped\u201d out original artworks.) Still, veteran art-crawlers know the granddaddy art fair, returning with 250-plus galleries this year, is just the tip of the Miami Art Week iceberg. The many satellite fairs and pop-ups swooping into Miami\u2019s orbit during the week of Art Basel are also intoxicating, soul-nourishing and often much wilder than a pack of dogs with tech billionaire masks.<\/p>\n

\"Gonzalo<\/p>\n

Gonzalo Fuenmayor and Dot FiftyOne Gallery \/ Courtesy<\/p>\n

Gonzalo Fuenmayor’s charcoal-on-paper work, “The Slip,” is part of his “Lights, Camera, Bananas! The Spectacle of Politics\u201d exhibition, headed to the Boca Raton Museum of Art in 2027. (Gonzalo Fuenmayor and Dot FiftyOne Gallery\/Courtesy)
\n\u2018Gonzalo Fuenmayor: Lights, Camera, Bananas! The Spectacle of Politics\u2019<\/p>\n

April 24, 2027-Oct. 3, 2027, at Boca Raton Museum of Art, 501 Plaza Real, Boca Raton<\/a>, 561-392-2500, BocaMuseum.org<\/a><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s just say banana-themed artworks have kind of a controversial track record<\/a> in this region. They\u2019re controversial for Gonzalo Fuenmayor, too. In his charcoal drawings, he uses bananas as shorthand for the Western history of Latin-American stereotypes and tropical excess, evoking depictions of Carmen Miranda wearing fruit hats in old Hollywood films and the cartoon Miss Chiquita in modern brand marketing. A Miami-based artist born in Colombia, Fuenmayor\u2019s new show is full of bananas (and humor and political satire), blended with Tinseltown sheen. \u201cLights, Camera, Bananas!\u201d unspools like a Hollywood movie, with drawings that include \u201cThe Slip\u201d (2022),\u00a0showing a banana peel, a stage curtain and someone slipping offstage; and \u201cApocalypse Magnus,\u201d a gaudy chandelier crowned with bunches of, well, you know.<\/p>\n

\"Florida<\/p>\n

Woody Walters for Clyde Butcher \/ Courtesy<\/p>\n

Florida Everglades photographer Clyde Butcher’s \u201cThis Land We Share: Celebrating 250 Years of America\u201d is on display at his Big Cypress Gallery in Ochopee. (Woody Walters for Clyde Butcher\/Courtesy)<\/p>\n

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