Selby's Orchid Show Changes With the Light This Fall, and Harbor Acres Can Catch It at Its Best

On the Thursday before The Orchid Show 2026 opened, Marie Selby Botanical Gardens let the press in early, and the sky didn't cooperate. Your Observer reported that it was overcast, so many of the light-reflecting pieces in the show couldn't do what they were built to do. The Sarasota Herald-Tribune and WWSB covered the show over opening weekend.

That gray preview shows what this year's show is about. Christian Sampson works in glass, acrylic and dichroic film. His installations change with the angle of the sun, the hour and where you stand. One visit gets you one version of the show. If you live in Harbor Acres, Selby's Downtown campus is just across Hudson Bayou, close enough to come back for a bright morning, then a hazy afternoon, then an evening. The show runs through December 6.

What Dichroic Film Does With a Sarasota Sky

Dichroic film splits light and reflects different wavelengths. Your Observer explains that it can seem to change color as you or the light moves, and it can cast a shadow in a different color from the one it shows you. Sarasota Magazine describes the method as layers of metal oxides that give glass shifting colors, "like stained glass employing a modern, less expensive method of production."

Sampson told Your Observer he likes how the installations "change like a living thing," and how each viewer's experience changes with them. Sarasota Magazine says the same thing in practical terms: visitors will have a different experience with the art each time they see it.

Sampson told Your Observer the work comes from growing up in Florida and watching light bounce off the water. At Selby, the light and the water he's working with are Sarasota Bay's.

Where the Pieces Sit, and What to Look For

Sampson told Your Observer the creative process took close to two years. The installations are spread across the Downtown campus, mostly in the conservatory and the Richard and Ellen Sandor Museum of Botany & the Arts. Selby describes them as site-specific works shown alongside living orchids and epiphytes in the museum, the gardens and the Display Conservatory.

The press coverage points to a few stops worth planning around:

• The Display Conservatory. This is the main room for the installations, and the living orchid collection is set right into the work.
• The Super Ghost Orchid room. It's inside the Sandor museum. Sarasota Magazine traces it to the ghost orchid, Dendrophylax lindenii, at Naples' Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, which Selby's longtime orchidologist Carlyle Luer first photographed and illustrated some 50 years ago.
• The pieces along the water. Sarasota Magazine published photos of Sampson's work set beside the water at Selby. Outdoors, these pieces get whatever the bay and the sky are doing that day.
• The shell pedestals. In some spots, crushed Florida shells serve as "pedestals," which Sarasota Magazine ties to Sampson's Florida childhood.
• The film in the museum. A video shows Sampson's young daughter dancing to flower references in costumes designed by his wife, also an artist. Your Observer's preview says she interprets five orchids, and it also mentions refractive rings, mirrored orbs and panels throughout the show.

The film runs the same way every time. The rings, orbs and panels change with the light. If you visit more than once, the conservatory and the pieces by the water are the places to come back to.

A Local Artist, and a Permanent Companion Piece Nearby

Sampson grew up in Bradenton and graduated from Ringling College of Art and Design in 1998. He now lives and works in Los Angeles. His own biography lists an MFA from Hunter College and exhibitions at the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Sarasota Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg.

You can see his work in Sarasota after December 6, too. Vita in Motu is on permanent view at the Sarasota Art Museum. A 2022 SRQ Magazine profile describes it as dichroic-film sculpture that works with natural light. At the museum the setting is architecture. At Selby it's orchids and the bay. Seeing both this fall is a good way to understand how much the setting shapes what the same material does.

Planning for More Than One Visit

Since the show changes with the light, the useful question is how to see more than one version of it. Selby's terms make that fairly easy.

Daytime admission at the Downtown campus is $28 for adults and $12 for ages 5 to 17. Children 4 and under get in free, members get in free, and member guests pay $12. The campus is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and admission covers the whole campus. The fine print on Selby's ticket portal says you don't have to buy in advance and tickets can be used on any day and at any time, even though the online checkout asks you to pick both. Selby also notes that prices may change. Selby's listings for the show point to regular daytime admission and don't show a separate Orchid Show surcharge.

At $28 a visit, three adult visits come to $84 before parking or lunch. Members get in free, so if you're already a member, every extra visit to catch better light costs you nothing at the gate.

Parking is free in the Living Energy Access Facility, or LEAF, which you can enter from Mound Street/US 41 or from South Orange Avenue. The building opened in January 2024 as the Morganroth Family Living Energy Access Facility, part of a Phase One that also added The Green Orchid restaurant, the Steinwachs Family Plant Research Center and the Jean Goldstein Welcome Center.

For a full day built around the light:

1. Arrive at 10 a.m. opening on a clear day and start in the Display Conservatory, then walk out to the pieces along the water.
2. Have lunch on campus. The Green Orchid by Michael's On East is open daily from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., and the Selby House Café is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
3. Spend the afternoon in the Sandor museum, then go back through the conservatory before the 5 p.m. close, when the sun is at a different angle than it was in the morning.
4. Come back on a cloudy day. The press saw the show under overcast skies, and that's a version of it too.

The Calendar Between Now and December 6

Daytime visits show the installations under natural light. Selby's fall events add other hours and settings.

Orchid Evening is the one chance on this list to see the installations after the gardens close to daytime visitors. Lunch in the Gardens, the next day, puts Sampson himself on campus. The calendar also overlaps at the end: Lights in Bloom opens December 5, and the Orchid Show's last day is December 6. That leaves one weekend when both are on the Downtown campus.

The Conservatory Hosting the Show Has a Construction Site Nearby

You'll find the Orchid Show in the Display Conservatory, which is still in use. A new building is going up nearby. In an August 11 release, Selby said Phase Two of its master plan had moved into vertical construction after permitting. Phase Two includes a hurricane-resilient Conservatory Complex, a Learning Pavilion and landscape work, and it's planned to open in November 2028. Daytime admission still covers the whole campus, conservatory included.

That gives this fall's show a time limit beyond its own run. A material that depends on sunlight is on view in the current Display Conservatory while a new Conservatory Complex rises toward a planned opening about two years from now. The installations come down after Sunday, December 6, and the Display Conservatory is open at 10 a.m. every day until then.

If you're getting out to Selby more often this fall and thinking about what's ahead for your own place near the bayou, Kim Ogilvie would be glad to hear from you. Our team has lived and worked alongside these gardens for decades, and we enjoy talking about the neighborhood as much as the market. Let's Connect.