In mapping the cultural season ahead, our arts editor Emma Witmer pored over the 2025–2026 calendars of dozens of Southwest Florida institutions, from major museums to intimate galleries. The result is a lineup that spans international masters seen anew, local artists advancing their practice and experimental work that draws the audience in. From that sweep, she selected three exhibitions that demand a spot on your calendar. In each, she spotlights a defining work—pieces that embody freedom, renewal and improvisation in ways that speak directly to our moment.
Joan Miró Unbound
Naples Art Institute curator Frank Verpoorten has a knack for reintroducing modern masters through lesser-known works, adding new depth to era-defining oeuvres. This December, he turns his attention to the later works of Spanish painter, sculptor and printmaker Joan Miró. The collection holds paintings, gouaches, etchings and rarely seen sketches from Miró’s foundation in Mallorca and museums and private collections throughout Spain.
Best known for Surrealist landmarks like Harlequin’s Carnival (1925), Miró underwent a dramatic late-career transformation, abandoning precision for raw, intuitive mark-making. Age brought liberation—he embraced accident, let materials guide discovery and attacked his craft with physical urgency: drawing and scratching directly onto printmaking plates, fingerpainting, scorching paper.
One work in the exhibit, the 1975 Déballage II (Unpacking II) captures his evolution. Miró’s signature stars, eyes and bird forms float in atmospheric blur, but everything feels immediate and spontaneous. Primary colors bleed, shapes overlap like half-remembered dreams and tonal halos lend an aged patina, as if the image had been unearthed from memory, a message from his younger self, calling out with creative abandon.
While Miró appears occasionally in private collection shows, Fire in the Soul offers a rare, concentrated look at his final etchings, aquatints and works on paper.
Joan Miró—Fire in the Soul at Naples Art Institute, December 13 through April 4.
Mally Khorasantchi Bares New Fruit
Bonita Springs artist Mally Khorasantchi creates botanically fueled, story-driven collages that reward endless discovery. Somehow, the accomplished artist’s vision—where floral blooms give way to private rooms, paralleling nature with daily life—grows clearer and sharper each year.
In March, Mally presents her 2025 output in a solo show at Naples’ Harmon-Meek Gallery. Among the highlights is Spring 2, her first piece completed after a six-month hiatus following a severe bout with influenza that left her hospitalized. The work pulses with hard-won symbols of renewal. Mally’s familiar plant abstractions still signal growth and cyclicality, but here they’re joined by clipped images of mirrors and open windows, symbols of reflection and new vistas to explore.
The collage technique also reflects her recovery: Fragments of plant life, furnishings and rockfaces clipped from her favorite books and magazines are carefully assembled into coherent beauty, carrying an emotional weight that transforms familiar materials into something more urgent. With each viewing, new details emerge from the layered composition, evidence of an artist who continues to surprise longtime admirers with her capacity to surprise.
Mally Khorasantchi Solo Show at Harmon-Meek Gallery, March 23 through April 10, 2026.
In Mally Khoronsatchi’s Spring 2 (2025)
swfl art exhibits to see this season Mally Khorasantchi’s Spring 2
In Mally Khoronsatchi’s Spring 2 (2025), botanical forms collide with mirrors and windows, symbols of renewal after illness. Far left: Joan Mirós Déballe II captures the raw spontaneity of his late-life experimentation.
sonia louise davis’ Sonic Frames
Artis—Naples, The Baker Museum struck gold last season with Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s interactive Obra Sonora, feeding Southwest Florida’s growing appetite for interactive art. Now they’re doubling down on audience engagement with sonia louise davis: to reverberate tenderly.
A minimalist wall mural punctuated by strips and curls of neon light—sonia’s take on a visual, musical score—sets the backdrop for the traveling exhibit, which comprises undulating, wool-tufted canvases and spindly, sculptural stringed instruments the artist calls ‘sounders.’ Each element creates a feedback loop from the reverberating instruments and soft, sound-dampening compositions.
The mellowing result underscores sonia’s philosophy on improvisation as a form of self-care—the need to be radically gentle in the process of self-exploration. Among the exhibit’s dominant hot pink and orange hues, emergence: natural affinities stands out for its organic, biological tones and almost cellular structure, echoing the serene backyard garden where she created the tufted ‘painting.’ The piece feels like the artist’s fingerprint, with ridged skin replaced by textile relief, and speaks to nature’s ability to foster calm and spark inspiration.
sonia louise davis: to reverberate tenderly at Artis—Naples, The Baker Museum, November 22 through May 24, 2026.
swfl art exhibits to see this season
sonia louise davis (b. United States, 1988). emergence: natural affinities, 2023. Peruvian highland wool, merino, merino/nylon blend, acrylic/wool blend, acrylic, wool and recycled wool yarns, 58 x 58 x 2 in. Courtesy the artist.