Tom Hall

Athena Rose Belis is going into her junior year at Florida Gulf Coast University. She’s angling for a degree and career in theater, but when asked about her long-range goals, she gives a full-throated laugh. That’s because Belis is already living the dream.

Southwest Florida’s museums regularly curate traveling art exhibitions as well as artworks from their permanent collections. During the month of August, five new exhibitions open, eight close and 16 others continue their runs.

Florida Gulf Coast University Associate Professor of Art Morgan T. Paine retires in August. The FGCU Art Galleries will mark the occasion with a retrospective of Paine’s art titled “Making a Clear Mark: 1997 to 2025.”

Local actor, author and poet Rachael Lord has written an immersive, interactive murder mystery called “Murder Down the Aisle.” It’s being performed in the Broadway Palm dining room, where patrons discover that they’re invited guests at the wedding-gone-awry of Ben Wolowitz and Katie Darling. Cameron Rogers plays the best man … and homicide detective Ronald Paisley.

Printmaking is an art form that has been around since the Renaissance. To ensure that it continues to flourish, some fine art printing presses regularly invite painters, sculptors and mixed media artists to come in and work with a master printer to produce fine art prints. Paulson Fontaine in Berkeley, California has done this for 25 years and through August 10, the Sarasota Art Museum is hosting a traveling exhibit of some of their prints.

This week, one show opens, four shows close, four continue their runs and there are five limited engagements at Southwest Florida equity and community theaters.

The Alliance for the Arts will close the month of September for renovations that will include upgrades focused on safety, efficiency and enhancing the visitor experience.

On exhibit at the Sarasota Art Museum is a body of work that examines memory, childhood and the notion of archive through large-scale chalk drawings and handmade ceramic sculptures. Titled “Where We Never Grow Old,” it features work by Chris Friday. Executive Director Virginia Shearer says that Friday is an artist whose career is ascending.

Three of the biggest stars of Broadway Palm’s “Annie” are making their theatrical debuts. Their names are Casey, Gritty and Teegan and they take turns playing the stray Annie rescues after she escapes from the orphanage.

“Vice & Virtue” fills all four galleries at Art Center Sarasota with two and 3D pieces that delve into the dualities of the human condition. Some shock. Some bemuse. All challenge viewers to reassess the shifting boundaries between moral, amoral and immoral in contemporary society.