As part of our 2025 Guide to the Arts in PRIME Magazine, entertainment writer Phillip Valys offers his Critic’s Picks for the best visual arts exhibits coming up in South Florida. Want to see the full issue? Go to SunSentinel.com/prime.
‘Art and Life in Rembrandt’s Time: Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection’
Oct. 25-March 29 at Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach. 561-832-5196, Norton.org.
One of the most valuable blockbuster shows the Norton Museum has ever displayed heads to South Florida this fall with a collection that’s never before toured the United States. The backbone of “Art & Life” is a trove of 17 Rembrandt paintings, the world’s largest collection of the Dutch master’s works in private hands, only rivaling the Rijksmuseum’s 22 in Amsterdam. The exhibit is on loan from billionaire and onetime West Palm Beach resident Thomas Kaplan and his wife, Daphne Recanati Kaplan, whose Leiden Collection is so named after Rembrandt’s birthplace. It comes here after several years hopscotching prestigious venues across the pond. Here are 75 paintings by 27 Dutch Golden Age artists from the 17th century, an era of booming prosperity in trade and art, split up into 11 sections exploring vignettes of daily life. Rembrandt’s works are joined by pieces from other artists including Johannes Vermeer, Frans Hals, Jan Lievens and Gerrit Dou.
Dominique Surh and The Leiden Collection, New York / Courtesy
Rembrandt van Rijn’s “Self-Portrait with Shaded Eyes” is among 17 of his works to be featured in the Norton Museum exhibit, “Art and Life in Rembrandt’s Time: Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection.” (Dominique Surh and The Leiden Collection, New York/Courtesy)
IGNITE Broward Art & Light Festival
Feb. 13-22 at Esplanade Park, Fort Lauderdale; ArtsPark at Young Circle, Hollywood; and MAD Arts, Dania Beach. IgniteBroward.com.
Maybe it’s all the immersive Van Goghs, Da Vincis, Klimts and Monets that have brought projection-mapped masterpieces to SoFlo lately, but if interactive art is on the ascent in the tricounty area, then Broward County clearly wants to be its epicenter. Investment in the county cultural division’s IGNITE, its free walkaround festival of eye-popping video displays and light-tripping sculptures, has jumped eightfold since the 2021 inaugural event. And as of 2025, its footprint now extends from Fort Lauderdale’s Riverwalk to Hollywood’s Young Circle. Thousands visited January’s event, which featured 27 immersive works. One of them: a fantasy wonderland of vivid cathedrals and lush gardens projected onto the walls of the Museum of Discovery and Science atrium. There were also lines of computer code on a video wall on the Riverwalk, undulating like ocean waves as visitors approached it; and jagged geometric shapes projected against the swaying canopies of real trees in Hollywood.
Jim Rassol/Contributor
The installation “Quantum Jungle” at Mad Arts in Dania Beach was part of the 2025 Ignite Broward Art & Light Festival. (Jim Rassol/Contributor)
‘Light as Air: The Buoyant Sculptures of Mariko Kusumoto’
Nov. 6-April 4 at Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens, Delray Beach. 561-495-0233 or Morikami.org.
There is a fragile beauty to Mariko Kusumoto’s fabric lifeforms, delicate pastel-hued pieces that sprawl out into sea urchins, corals and anemones swaying on the ocean floor. Kusumoto, daughter of a Buddhist priest, grew up in a 400-year-old temple on the Japanese island of Kyushu surrounded by lush vegetation that has inspired her work. And now, Kusumoto’s airy sculptures of flora and fauna, made with colorful materials like polyester, nylon and cotton, will go on display here. Each was made using a crafting technique called tsumami zaiku, in which pieces of cloth are pinched and folded with tweezers — with no needlework required.
The Wolfsonian FIU, The Mitchell Wolfson, Jr Collection / Courtesy
Posters from World’s Fairs of the past are on display alongside artifacts and inventions first introduced at these expos at the Wolfsonian’s new exhibition, “World’s Fairs: Visions of Tomorrow.” (The Wolfsonian-FIU, The Mitchell Wolfson, Jr Collection/Courtesy)
‘World’s Fairs: Visions of Tomorrow’
Through Feb. 22 at Wolfsonian-Florida International University, Miami Beach. 305-531-1001 or Wolfsonian.org.
The Eiffel Tower and Ferris wheels. Monorails and diesel engines powered by peanut oil. Touchscreen phones and clothing zippers. Miraculous inventions now in everyday use once made their innocuous debuts at World Fairs as strange gadgets and doohickeys that promised wide-eyed glimpses into the future. Now, these attractions of the latest technology, science and art are being revisited in this Wolfsonian show. Using the Wolfsonian’s collection of World’s Fair posters and books, the show traces the history of these international spectacles back to their 1851 roots, the uplifting themes that drew millions from Paris to Spokane, and the attractions that kept millions spellbound. (There’s even the world’s first commercial television on display.) For the best experience, go during the opening of its companion show, “Marco Brambilla: After Utopia” (Nov. 26-Feb. 22), in which the contemporary artist imagines a virtual expo of iconic fairs held across time around the globe.