Exhibits

Current Exhibits

Sharing the Path: Understanding Our Environment Through the Learned Wisdom and Traditional Knowledge of Indigenous People

October 13, 2025 – February 14, 2026
Museum of the Everglades

As wildfires rage across national forests turned to tinderboxes — their historic stewards driven from the land or forbidden to tend it — while our waterways waver between historic droughts and catastrophic floods, it just may be time to stop fighting to control the earth and work to heal it. It stands to reason that if we wish to understand what the world we live in is telling us, we should seek the counsel of those who already speak its language.

This new exhibit, created in part with guidance from the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, seeks to re-enforce the relevance and underscore the importance of recent initiatives by organizations, institutions, and even governments — from the Federal level on down — to integrate the knowledge and experience of indigenous cultures into policies and decision-making.

When pioneer settlers began to colonize South Florida in the late 1800s, the most successful of their lot were those who not only befriended but also listened to and learned from the people who had called the Everglades their home for centuries.

Sharing the Path explores both the past influence and the future possibilities of implementing traditional indigenous knowledge in everything from land management and global diplomacy to the decisions we make in our most personal relationships: with each other, ourselves, and the earth itself.

Aztec Dancers: A Living Tradition by Lisette Morales

October 21, 2025 – January 31, 2026
Immokalee Pioneer Museum

Aztec Dancers is a photo exhibition by local photographer Lisette Morales, celebrating Danza Azteca Guadalupana as practiced in Southwest Florida. Documenting a year and a half of devotion, the series centers the Navarro family’s twenty four year commitment to this sacred, syncretic tradition, presented each year from Día de los Muertos through Three Kings Day. Morales’s images honor the spiritual power, cultural resilience, and collective joy of Indigenous and migrant communities sustaining this vibrant ceremonial practice across generations and geographies.

Marco on the Move

November 8, 2025 – March 21, 2026
Marco Island Historical Museum

As human beings, we have repeatedly found Marco Island a paradise. This exhibit explores how we get here, how we move about, and how transportation defines us as Marco Islanders. Hop on your boat, plane, train, car, or bicycle and cruise on into this exhibit.

A Cottage Christmas

November 29, 2025 – January 3, 2026
Collier Museum at Government Center

Visit the Naples Cottage at the Collier Museum at Government Center for our 5th Annual holiday display, A Cottage Christmas. Explore the Twentieth Century Christmas traditions that introduced new technologies and materials to Christmas celebrations, transforming the holiday from a home-based Victorian celebration of a few days to a modernistic, multi-week season of shopping, events, and celebrations. The cottage is decorated in mid-century holiday style, and vintage decorations are on display throughout the house.

Upcoming Exhibits

Railroads at Work

January 14, 2026 – May 2, 2026
Naples Depot Museum

For more than a century, Americans young and old have been fascinated by the excitement and glamor that are part of the railroad tradition–the power of locomotives, the pleasant thrill and sense of adventure inspired by the sound of a train whistle in the distance, the sight of endless rails stretching in the horizon, the mystery of far-off places.

This romance of railroading and, in late years, an increased awareness of the essential nature of railroads, have stimulated a tremendous interest in railroad history, equipment, organization, services, operations, and so on.

This exhibit is adapted from a booklet for teachers published by the Association of American Railroads throughout the 1950s, that includes photographs and descriptions designed to engage students in the study of railroading.

Enjoy this journey back in time!

Connect and Protect 

January 20, 2026 – May 9, 2026
Collier Museum at Government Center

Celebrate the 200,000 acres approved for conservation since the Florida Wildlife Corridor Act. This Wildpath photography exhibit features properties secured through the Florida Forever and Rural and Family Lands protection programs. Wildpath tells the stories of wide-ranging wildlife and the habitats they connect, to help protect a planet in balance. The Wildpath team of storytellers, explorers, and conservationists leads us on an extraordinary photographic journey of discovery through the Florida Wildlife Corridor in the exhibition Connect & Protect. This exhibit celebrates the first forty Corridor landscapes approved for protection since the signing of the Florida Wildlife Corridor Act, with photographs by noted conservation photographers and a satellite map of Florida that marks the Corridor and identifies property locations around the state. This traveling exhibit was made possible by the Jacarlene Foundation.

Immokalee Restaurants:The Best Tasting Business Around

February 10, 2026 – May 16, 2026
Immokalee Pioneer Museum

From Raynor's Seafood to Lozano's Mexican Restaurant, Immokalee has been serving up local flavor for decades. Join us for this tasty survey of Immokalee's oldest restaurants as well as the modern offerings that serve our community and tastes.

Growing Obsession—the Enchanting Story of Orchids in the Everglades

February 24, 2026 – June 20, 2026
Museum of the Everglades

The Sunshine State is home to over one hundred different species of orchids. More than half of these are found is South Florida, with many of the rarest and most obscure specimens found only deep in the wild landscape of the Everglades. 

This exhibit explores the exotic beauty of these often-otherworldly florae as well as their role in some of the more significant and occasionally notorious chapters of our region’s history. The passion these unique plants inspire—sometimes bordering on mania—has been compared to the “gold fever” experienced by treasure hunters. Botanical researchers and horticultural enthusiasts from around the world make obligatory pilgrimages to the nearby Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park—known as the Orchid Capital of North America due to its rich concentration of almost fifty different flowering plants in the Orchidaceae family, including the ever-elusive Ghost Orchid. 

Combining breathtaking imagery, historical accounts, and the engaging stories of local personalities inextricably linked to these blossoming beauties and the madness they occasionally inspire, Growing Obsession gives each visitor a glimpse of the haunting beauty and elemental magic that can sometimes be found in the Everglades and its extraordinary flora.

America the Beautiful by Clyde Butcher
March 31, 2026 – July 11, 2026

Immokalee Pioneer Museum

As part of the America250 celebration, we are proud to exhibit Clyde Butcher’s America the Beautiful. Known for his powerful black-and-white, large-scale photography, Butcher captures the awe-inspiring landscapes of America’s National Parks—some of our nation’s greatest natural treasures. His work invites viewers to experience the majesty, serenity, and enduring significance of these iconic places.