The Naples Philharmonic's first Pops program begins November 3. Docent-led tours of The Baker Museum Sculpture Trail start up again on Thursdays in November. Those two dates are the usual signs that season has started. On the Artis campus at Pelican Bay, though, the season begins earlier. It starts in a 15-day run from Friday, October 16, to Friday, October 30, 2026, with a museum opening, a film festival, a free evening and the first Masterworks concert, one after another.
By the time November arrives, the biggest exhibition of the year will have been open for more than two weeks and the film festival will be over. Here is that run in order.
The run at a glance
- Fri., Oct. 16, 4 p.m.: Curator lecture on The Surrealist International, Ubben Signature Event Space
- Sat., Oct. 17: The Surrealist International and Florida Contemporary 2026–27 open. Dawn's Forest reopens.
- Thu., Oct. 22, to Sun., Oct. 25: 18th Naples International Film Festival
- Wed., Oct. 28, 6 to 9 p.m.: Art After Hours, free museum admission
- Thu., Oct. 29, and Fri., Oct. 30, 7:30 p.m.: Masterworks opener, Hayes Hall
October 16: The Lecture Comes the Day Before the Show
The first event of the run takes place the day before any gallery opens. Matthew Gale, former head of displays at Tate Modern and a co-curator of Surrealism Beyond Borders, speaks on Friday, October 16, at 4 p.m. in the Ubben Signature Event Space.
If you marked a date when the season was first announced, check it again. The July 13 season release listed the lecture for Tuesday, October 20, at 10 a.m. The current event listing has moved it to the 16th at 4 p.m.
October 17: Magritte on Two Floors
Saturday is the anchor of the run. The Surrealist International: Fifty Years of Dreams opens on the third floor of The Baker Museum and runs through February 14, 2027. It draws on the collection of Tate in the United Kingdom. The list includes artists most people know, such as Salvador Dalí, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Joan Miró, Man Ray, Leonora Carrington and Dorothea Tanning. It also includes artists the museum says "deserve to be better known," among them Kati Horna, Malangatana Ngwenya, Osamu Shiihara and Lionel Wendt.
René Magritte is also on that list, and the museum's lead image is his 1937 plaster The Future of Statues, from Tate Modern. One floor down, The Baker Museum already holds Magritte: Reflections of Another World. That is six Magritte paintings, five oils and one gouache, on a five-year loan from the daughter of collector Jean Van Parys, a close friend of the artist. The museum notes that none of the six had been shown in North America before. From October 17, a visitor can see Tate's Magritte on the third floor and the Van Parys Magrittes on the second in one visit.
Two more things change the same day:
- Louise Nevelson's Dawn's Forest reopens. The museum describes the white-painted wood assemblage, with elements as tall as 25 feet, as one of the most iconic works in its permanent collection. It fills the Drackett Gallery and extends through Hayes Hall. It has been closed for a while, and the museum gives October 17 as its return.
- Florida Contemporary 2026–27 opens in the Hayes Hall galleries and The Blair Foundation Gallery and runs through June 27, 2027. This year's annual survey of artists working in Florida features Dustin Harewood, Nicario Jiménez-Quispe, Savannah Magnolia and Anastasia Samoylova. The public program tied to the show is an artists' panel on January 28, 2027.
So Hayes Hall changes too. The same building that will host the film festival's opening and closing nights the following week will reopen with Nevelson's columns and the Florida Contemporary walls in place.
The museum's public pages list no opening reception for October 17. Regular hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. It is closed Mondays, with later hours on some performance dates and Art After Hours nights.
October 22–25: Four Days of Film, Split Between Two Venues
Five days after the museum opens, the Naples International Film Festival brings film to the campus for its 18th year. The festival uses two venues, which affects how you buy tickets. Campus events take place in Hayes Hall, Daniels Pavilion and Norris Garden. Most regular screenings are at Paragon Theaters Pavilion, on screens 2 through 5. Gulfshore Life's festival listing describes the same split.
Thursday, October 22. Opening night in Hayes Hall is a program of five short films: Jazz Infernal, My Dog: The Paradox, Body of Work, We Were Here and Life Goes On. Doors open at 6 p.m. and the films start at 7.
Friday and Saturday, October 23 and 24. Cinema Under the Stars moves outdoors to Norris Garden at 7:30 p.m. Tenor: My Name Is Pati shows Friday and Too Soon shows Saturday.
Sunday, October 25. Closing night starts with the awards ceremony and wrap party in Daniels Pavilion at 5:30 p.m. At 7:30 p.m. in Hayes Hall, Jack Everly conducts the Naples Philharmonic in John Williams' score for Superman in Concert.
Ticketing works differently at each venue, and two published details don't match:
- Paragon screenings: $16 standard seats, $20 Lux Box seats. A 10-pack of standard seats costs $140, about $14 a ticket, and is sold only at the Paragon box office. The page lists no all-access pass.
- Opening night: $40 for the films only, $125 with the party, $225 with the VIP party. Sold only through Artis.
- Norris Garden: $84 for a table for four. Pairs are $42 and sold by phone only at 239-597-1900. The ticketing page says these reservations are good for October 24 and 25. The festival schedule and Gulfshore Life put the garden screenings on Friday and Saturday, October 23 and 24, which matches this year's calendar. Confirm the night when you book.
- Closing night: The ticketing page says prices start at $88, while the closing-night event page says $90. Both include Superman in Concert.
October 28–30: A Free Night, Then the Masterworks Opener
On Wednesday, October 28, Art After Hours keeps The Baker Museum open from 6 to 9 p.m. with free admission. October's edition has Día de los Muertos activities and live music from Mariachi Cielito Lindo. That makes it the cheapest way to see the Surrealism show in its second week, and the Van Parys Magrittes on the floor below. The next Art After Hours is November 25.
The next night, the Philharmonic opens its main series. Beethoven and Brahms runs October 29 and 30 at 7:30 p.m. in Hayes Hall. Alexander Shelley conducts and Yeol Eum Son is the soloist in Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3. The program opens with Ellen Taaffe Zwilich's Jubilation and ends with Brahms' Symphony No. 1.
The Philharmonic's first event of the season was the October 10 family concert Penelope's Odyssey of the Orchestra in Daniels Pavilion, led by associate conductor Manuel López-Gómez. The concert that opens a subscriber's season, though, is the Masterworks program at the end of the month. November then continues the schedule. Mandy Gonzalez Sings Broadway runs November 3 through 7 with Everly conducting. The second Masterworks program follows November 20 and 21, with Markus Stenz, violinist Leila Josefowicz, John Adams' Scheherazade.2 and Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances.
Across Seagate, Waterside Is Partway Through Its Own Changes
Many Hayes Hall evenings start with dinner nearby, and the closest dining options have changed since spring. Gulfshore Business reports that Eddie V's Prime Seafood opened June 7 at Waterside Shops. It occupies a 9,991-square-foot freestanding building, a renovated former bank office at the corner of Seagate Drive and Myra Janco Daniels Boulevard, and has live jazz nightly in its V Lounge.
Waterside is changing on a slower schedule than the arts campus. Here is where things stood as of this week:
- Open: Vuori opened September 4, Gulfshore Business reported, and Waterside's own announcement places it near Sephora. Dior moved on June 11 from inside Saks Fifth Avenue to a standalone 6,000-square-foot boutique.
- Moving: Anthropologie closes its current store starting Monday, October 19, and is moving to a new space near Sephora. As of its October 8 notice, no reopening date had been announced.
- Announced for fall: LoveShackFancy, Piranesi fine jewelry, and Peter Millar in the former White House Black Market space. Gulfshore Business presents these as planned openings, not confirmed ones.
- Later: The RH Naples campus, which includes a restaurant in a glass atrium and is being built on the former Nordstrom site, is hoped to open near the end of the year. Buck & Rider, in the former Brio Italian Grille space, is targeted for early 2027.
That means the two new restaurants still to come at Waterside will open after the October run on the Artis campus is over. For dinner before the film festival or the Masterworks opener, Eddie V's is the new option already open, and the other two are still under construction.
At The Beachfront Team, we keep the Pelican Bay calendar on our desks alongside our building updates. If you'd like a seasoned local perspective on homes near the Artis campus and Seagate Drive, we invite you to schedule a confidential consultation.
