Shared Light: Lynn Goldsmith
In Sarasota, where gardens are treated as both living collections and stages for imagination, a flower can become more than a flower.
By Edit Sarasota Staff
In Sarasota, where gardens are treated as both living collections and stages for imagination, a flower can become more than a flower. It can be a study in color, a portrait of time, or a point of connection between two artists. That conversation comes into view this summer with “Shared Light: Lynn Goldsmith,” an exhibition at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens that brings together Goldsmith’s flower photographs and intimate portraits of Selby Gardens artist in residence Patti Smith.
Goldsmith is perhaps best known for images of cultural figures: over five decades, her photographs have appeared in Life, Newsweek, Time, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Sports Illustrated, and other publications that helped define the visual record of American public life. Yet her practice has never been confined to celebrity portraiture. Her floral images turn attention toward the quiet drama of the natural world—its textures, gestures, shadows, and fleeting arrangements.
Presented across the gardens’ indoor and outdoor spaces, the exhibition invites Sarasota audiences to consider the affinities between Goldsmith’s subjects. A portrait of Smith, the musician, poet, and visual artist whose work has long resisted easy categorization, may be read alongside the luminous forms of a flower: each carries a distinct presence, and each asks to be seen closely. The pairing also reflects Selby Gardens’ broader role as a place where horticulture, art, science, and public life meet.
For a community accustomed to moving between galleries, performance spaces, and gardens in a single afternoon, the exhibition offers a particularly natural fit. It extends Selby Gardens’ cultural programming beyond botanical display while giving visitors a fresh way to encounter two artists whose work is grounded in observation and emotional intensity. The setting matters, too: Goldsmith’s photographs will be experienced not in isolation but in the company of the living landscapes that have made Selby a defining part of Sarasota’s identity.
Goldsmith’s work is held in collections including the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Seventeen books have been devoted to her images, among them Flower, published by Rizzoli in 2000, and Patti Smith: Before Easter After, issued by Taschen in 2019 and later by Rizzoli in a 2024 trade edition. “Shared Light: Lynn Goldsmith” opens Saturday, June 20, 2026, at Selby Gardens’ Downtown Sarasota campus, 1534 Mound Street. Expect the exhibition to unfold between interiors and garden paths, where the subjects’ shared radiance can be felt rather than simply observed.