Iconic Singer, Poet Patti Smith Returns To Selby Gardens April 28

SARASOTA, FL — Iconic singer-songwriter and poet Patti Smith returns to the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens’ downtown Sarasota campus on April 28 at 7 p.m.

Tickets for “An Encore with Patti Smith,” which are $75 each, go on sale April 7 at noon and can be purchased online here. Selby Gardens members will have first access to them.

Smith performed at the Selby Gardens on Feb. 15 for the opening of its latest exhibit, "Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith: Flowers, Poetry and Light,” which will be displayed through June 26.

Marking the sixth edition of the annual Jean & Alfred Goldstein Exhibition Series, which explores the work of major artists through the lens of their connection to nature, this immersive exhibition puts a selection of Mapplethorpe's photographs of orchids, hyacinths, and irises, and excerpts of Smith's poems and lyrics on flowers and nature, in dialogue with new horticultural installations inspired by the two artists' work, the Selby Gardens said in a news release.

Smith reflected on her visit to Sarasota and the “homage to Robert Mapplethorpe’s flowers, and our enduring friendship” at Selby Gardens in a Feb. 17 Substack newsletter.

“It’s a beguiling exhibition, with audio of ‘Just Kids,’ poetry and music and the birds singing and lightly swirling breeze as a backdrop,” she wrote.

Mapplethorpe and Smith met the day that she moved to New York City in the summer of 1967. Their relationship, through which the two spent time as artistic collaborators, lovers and friends, proved formative to each other's creative practice and artistic output, the Selby Gardens said.

"Flowers, Poetry and Light" reunites Mapplethorpe and Smith in a garden setting, presenting works by each inspired by nature during the counterculture movements of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.