Every two years, word goes around Rosemary Beach that the sculpture show is "back." A new crop of outdoor art arrives, gets mounted in the pocket parks and greens, and the assumption among most residents is that it will rotate out again the way it rotated in. That assumption is only half right. Since 2017, at least five pieces from past exhibitions have never left. They didn't get packed up and shipped home. They got purchased and installed for good, and they now anchor five specific spots you already walk past.
The fifth biennial Rosemary Beach Sculpture Exhibition opens to the public on Saturday, October 17, 2026, following a private Patrons Celebration Party for artists, donors, and patrons on Thursday, October 15. What most coverage of the event misses is that the show itself is not really the point. The point is what gets kept.
How a Rotating Show Became a Permanent Collection
The idea started with a homeowner. In 2015, Tom Kramer visited a European town with an outdoor sculpture exhibition and came home to Rosemary Beach wanting something similar. Working with then Town Manager David Bailey, Kramer built the first Rosemary Beach Sculpture Exhibition from scratch, personally cold-calling sculptors to submit work. That first show ran May through October 2017. Eleven sculptures were selected from the applications, and one of them, Votive by Gregory Johnson, won best in show. The Property Owners Association bought it. Votive still stands in North Barrett Square today.
The same year, a different kind of piece joined the collection through donation rather than competition. Colors of My Mind, the blue dog sculpture by the late George Rodrigue, was placed in East Long Green Park through a gift from Wendy Wolfe Magnus, Rodrigue's widow. Two pieces, two different paths into permanence, both from the same inaugural cycle.
That is the mechanic residents tend to miss. This is not a rotating gallery that occasionally donates a piece to the town out of sentiment. It is a juried competition where winning, in a very literal sense, means staying. Public records for the second cycle, held in the gap between the first and third, are thin, so this piece sticks to the three exhibitions with verifiable acquisition details: the first, the third, and the fourth.
The Map You're Already Walking
If you have walked from North Barrett Square toward the Splash Park on a normal Tuesday, you have already traced the exhibition's acquisition history without realizing it. Here is what is actually there, and which cycle put it there:
- Votive by Gregory Johnson, North Barrett Square. Best in show, first exhibition, 2017.
- Colors of My Mind by George Rodrigue, East Long Green Park. Donated in 2017 by Wendy Wolfe Magnus.
- Holds Water: Kneeling Rock for Standing Rock by Kimmerjae Macarus, in front of the POA office on West Long Green. Best in show, third exhibition, 2021-22.
- Extinction Blues by Charles Pilkey, the Splash Park on Bridgetown Avenue. Second place, third exhibition, 2021-22.
- Bradbury by Kirsten Kainz, the Butterfly Garden at Kingston Road. Purchased privately by Steve Stevens in memory of his late wife, Jan Stevens.
Five addresses, five pieces, none of them going anywhere. The third exhibition alone drew 41 artists from 25 states, Washington, D.C., and Spain, who submitted 80 sculptures for consideration. Fourteen made the cut for that show. Three of the fourteen never left.
Where the Pattern Repeats
By the time the fourth exhibition opened on October 19, 2024, six sculptures already had permanent homes scattered across town, a fact the exhibition's own materials confirm. Alongside those six, nine newly juried sculptures went up under the theme "Elevating Our Built Environment through Public Art." When that show closed in October 2025, all nine were listed for sale directly from the artists, priced between $6,000 and $45,000.
That price range matters for understanding what happens next. A private buyer, a donor group, or the POA itself can step in during the closing weeks of any cycle and turn a temporary installation into a permanent one, the same way Steve Stevens did with Bradbury. Nothing about a piece's placement in a green or a garden guarantees it stays. What guarantees it stays is somebody deciding it's worth keeping and paying for that decision before the trucks come to haul it away.
Here's how the acquisitions have stacked up across cycles that data confirms:
| Exhibition | Dates | Sculptures on Display | Outcome at Close |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | May–Oct 2017 | 11 | Votive purchased by the POA; Colors of My Mind donated separately the same year |
| 3rd | Sept 2021–Sept 2022 | 14 | Holds Water and Extinction Blues purchased; Bradbury purchased privately |
| 4th | Oct 2024–Oct 2025 | 15 (6 permanent + 9 new) | Nine new pieces listed for sale, $6,000–$45,000; individual outcomes not publicly confirmed |
What Opens October 17
The fifth exhibition is organized by an eleven-member volunteer committee led by Project Director Alisa Ghazvini, working alongside Burt Beusch, Michelle Brooks, Ceil Chapman, Gary Handler, Molly Johnson, Mary Lostak, Johnny Mutina, Stacy Parks, Trevor Price, and Sherrye Röell. Per the exhibition's own call for entries, roughly ten sculptures are expected to be selected for this cycle, chosen by a panel that includes art experts, community members, and Rosemary Beach representatives. The show is backed by the POA and partners with the Cultural Arts Alliance of Walton County as part of Art Month South Walton.
For residents who want to see the new pieces without waiting for a docent tour, the exhibition provides a free printed catalogue with a site map, plus an audio tour through the Otocast smartphone app narrated by the artists themselves. Both tools work whether you're doing a dedicated walk of the whole show or just noticing a new piece on your normal route to Barrett Square.
What to Watch For This Time
None of the ten sculptures arriving this fall are guaranteed to still be standing in Rosemary Beach come 2028. History suggests one or two will be. Across the first and third exhibitions, the two cycles with confirmed acquisition outcomes, five of 25 total juried entries eventually became permanent, a conversion rate of one in five, whether the buyer was the POA acting on a best-in-show vote or a private resident choosing to memorialize someone the way Steve Stevens did with Bradbury.
If you're planning to walk the new exhibition after it opens on October 17, the useful question isn't which piece you like best. It's which piece you'd bet on still being there in five years. The town's public art map has been built one wager at a time since 2017, and this fall's version of that bet starts on Barrett Square.
For those who want to see the current five before the new work arrives and the comparison gets harder to make, the walk from North Barrett Square to East Long Green Park to West Long Green to the Splash Park to the Butterfly Garden takes under twenty minutes on foot and covers two different biennials of decisions.
Full exhibition details, the printed catalogue, and Otocast instructions are available directly through the Rosemary Beach Sculpture Exhibition.
Rosemary Beach residents already know the town rewards paying attention to small details. Which sculpture becomes permanent this cycle is one more thing worth watching closely. If you're weighing a move here, or already own on one of these greens and are curious what a property near a soon-to-be-permanent piece of public art might be worth, that's a conversation grounded in the same kind of local specifics. The Morar Group knows this stretch of 30A block by block. Text or call us to start your 30A conversation.
