Caption: Karen Knorr, Morning Glory, Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, Abu Dhabi, 2019, Courtesy of the artist © Karen Knorr
Location: Phillip Hulitar Sculpture Garden
Hours: Open daily from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., weather permitting
Closed on holidays, will close for inclement weather and Four Arts special events, go to fourarts.org before visiting and for more information.
Birds are flocking to the Phillip Hulitar Sculpture Garden at The Society of the Four Arts and settling down for The High Life: Contemporary Photography and the Birds, on display from December 5, 2026, through May 2, 2027. Organized by the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography and curated by photography experts William Ewing and Danaé Panchaud, the exhibition features more than 50 contemporary photographers from around the world including Robert Clark, Tim Flach, Nadav Kander, Karen Knorr, Vik Muniz, Anastasia Samoylova, Kristin Schnell, Hans van Asch, Robert Walker, and Kiki Xue, among others.
Birds have long fascinated, perplexed, and inspired human beings, and photographers are no exception. Photographs of birds are found in every decade of the medium’s nearly 200-year-old history, and today they continue to be a challenging yet rewarding subject requiring immense patience, specialized equipment, and deep knowledge of avian behavior. Rather than being organized by field of study or species, The High Life surveys the beautiful, complex, and occasionally dark relationship between humans and birds, questioning how we observe them and respond to their presence and vice versa.
Many of the photographers in the exhibition are wildlife photographers; of these, some specialize in birds, while others depict a wide variety of animals. Of the non-wildlife photographers, there are art photographers as well as conceptual artists, concentrating instead on the language of photography and its paradoxes. Also included are studio practitioners focusing on portraiture and fashion and documentary and street photographers. The resulting combination of images provides a rich and varied perspective on the subject. The exhibition is accompanied by a 272-page fully illustrated hardcover catalogue Aviary: The Bird in Contemporary Photography, which is available for purchase at the Box Office in the Dixon Building.
This exhibition has been co-organized by the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography, Minneapolis/Paris/Lausanne, and Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, in association with The Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach.
