Sarasota ~ Bradenton ~ Lakewood Ranch ~ Siesta Key ~ Palmer Ranch ~ Venice
Art Galleries & Museums
This is a list of the "Not to Be Missed" galleries, exhibits, botanical gardens, and museums in our beautiful city. Sarasota and the surrounding communities have a plethora of cultural experiences to choose from. Public and private art galleries abound.
This is not a list of private galleries. To find those, walk the streets of downtown Sarasota and you'll see so many of them.
Click on the logos or names below to visit their websites or learn more.
The Ringling is one of the preeminent arts institutions in the United States. Its unusually diverse collections—art, circus, history, architecture, performance, gardens—reflect its unique origin story. At the heart of that story is circus impresario John Ringling and his wife Mable, and their shared desire to make Sarasota a world-class destination.
Unconditional Surrender Statue
Located at The Bayfront Park in downtown Sarasota, this iconic statue has become a crowd favorite. Don't miss it!
Native tribes claimed this land. Explorers sailed the bays. Through the years of Seminole Indian Wars, the coming of the hardy pioneers who fished the waters and cultivated the land, the Crackers who herded the cattle, and the visionaries who built a city unique in its diversity, Sarasota remains a home to be desired; a place of proud heritage.
Selby Gardens is delighted to present the extraordinary imagery of photographer and conservationist Clyde Butcher throughout the grounds of the Historic Spanish Point campus. Large-scale prints on aluminum of Butcher’s beautiful photographs of plants, animals, and habitats of Florida are on view amid the natural landscape of the 30-acre waterfront preserve, enabling the public to engage with the artist’s work like never before.
Enjoy this exhibition through 8/31/24.
Sarasota Art Museum is a catalyst for appreciation and understanding of the art of our time. As a platform for education, exposure and experimentation, the Museum inspires new ideas and new ways of being through an endless rotation of transformative, relevant, and pioneering exhibitions and programs designed to elevate and empower all by cultivating discerning visual thinkers and ethical citizens.
Marie Selby Botanical Gardens provides 45 acres of bayfront sanctuaries connecting people with air plants of the world, native nature, and our regional history. Established by forward thinking women of their time, Selby Gardens is composed of the 15-acre Downtown Sarasota campus and the 30-acre Historic Spanish Point campus in the Osprey area of Sarasota County, Florida. The Downtown Campus on Sarasota Bay is the only botanical garden in the world dedicated to the display and study of epiphytic orchids, bromeliads, gesneriads and ferns, and other tropical plants.
Once-a-year, spectators are afforded the opportunity to become an integral part of the fine art creative process. From start to finish, you can witness the largest gathering of renowned pavement artists perform using the road surface as a canvas to develop oversized masterpieces in chalk.The Chalk Festival, a jubilation of art and culture, is recognized for hosting the world’s largest gathering of Internationally renowned pavement artists. Founded in 2007, the festival invites artists to travel to Sarasota County to create masterpieces in chalk. The artist hail from 30+ countries, the furthest being Australia and Japan. The venue for this great event is Burns Court in downtown Sarasota. Plan NOW to experience it Nov. 8-10, 2024!
Since 2004, Embracing Our Differences has used the power of art and prose to promote inclusion, kindness and respect. One way we accomplish this is through our annual international art exhibition in Florida's Cultural Coast at Sarasota’s Bayfront Park and St. Petersburg's Poynter Park. The juried exhibit consists of 50 billboard-sized works of art, each accompanied by a thought-provoking quotation. Next showing of this exhibit is: January 19- April 13, 2025
