When the Vero Beach Museum of Art announced its 2027 gala, it said guests "will be among some of the final visitors to spend time in the current galleries before the museum goes dark and continues its expansive and exciting rebuild." The gala is Cherry Blossoms at Night on January 29, 2027, with cocktails in the Buck Atrium and dinner in the Holmes Great Hall. It is already sold out, and the museum is taking names for a wait list.
For most people who live a few minutes from Riverside Park, the last visit to the building that opened as the Center for the Arts on January 31, 1986 will be an ordinary afternoon this fall or winter. That afternoon needs some planning. The season doesn't end on one closing date. Exhibitions leave on different days between late October and early February, so the week you pick decides what you see.
The Closing Order
Here is the museum's published calendar, in the order things open and close:
- Through October 25: James Prosek: At Work in the Holmes Gallery.
- October 25: Jill Nathanson: Chromatic Phrases gives up the Titelman Gallery and continues in the Schumann Gallery alone.
- November 21: Hokusai, Hiroshige, Hasui: Japanese Landscapes in Print opens across the Holmes and Titelman galleries.
- January 3, 2027: The Museum in the Garden: Envisioning the New VBMA closes in the Stark Gallery.
- January 28 and 29, 2027: The museum is listed as closed to visitors.
- February 7, 2027: The listed end date for both the Hokusai exhibition and Chromatic Phrases.
Those last two entries don't quite line up. The gala language suggests the galleries go dark around late January, while the exhibition pages run to February 7. The museum hasn't published a single final day of public admission. If you're saving a visit for the very end, check with VBMA before you go.
The museum has also added access for this stretch. Starting September 14, it reopened on Mondays. Galleries and the Museum Store are now open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m., with a free docent-led tour daily at 2 p.m. included with admission.
Before October 25
The first exhibition to go is the one with the most direct tie to this coastline. James Prosek: At Work brings together more than 70 paintings, watercolors, and sculptures from three decades of the naturalist's studio and field studies: botanical portraits, fish, and wildlife from his travels.
Prosek is also leading an outdoor Nature Walk and Sketch on Saturday, October 24, from 3 to 4:30 p.m. It meets at the Toni Robinson Waterfront Trail, an Indian River Land Trust property on 79th Street south of the Wabasso Causeway, so this one meets off the museum campus.
A week earlier, on October 17, Jill Nathanson leads a workshop called Abstract Painting: Past, Present, Personal from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. At 3 p.m. she walks visitors through Chromatic Phrases. The exhibition shows more than 20 recent paintings shaped by her early immersion in 1960s and 1970s Color Field painting. Chief Curator Caitlin Swindell curated it, and the museum organized it in-house.
The October evenings are busy across the park too. Riverside Theatre opens My Vaudeville Man! on October 15. The show is a Southeast premiere inspired by vaudeville performer Jack Donahue and his mother, and it runs 44 performances through November 22. The Loop's outdoor music calendar lists Jerzi Band on October 8, East Harbor Trio on October 9, and the folk and bluegrass band Uproot Hootenanny on October 23, each from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.
The Six Weeks When Every Gallery Is in Use
From November 21 to January 3, the calendar puts a show in every gallery the season uses: Hokusai in Holmes and Titelman, Nathanson in Schumann, and The Museum in the Garden in Stark. This is the only stretch of the final season when that happens.
The museum calls the Hokusai exhibition its final touring exhibition in the current building. It comes from the MFA Boston with more than 100 works. VBMA is its first venue in the United States. The prints trace the Japanese landscape tradition through three artists. Katsushika Hokusai was the innovator, Utagawa Hiroshige developed the form, and Kawase Hasui reinvented it in modern terms with the shin hanga movement. Hasui was named a "living national treasure" in 1956.
A few rooms away, The Museum in the Garden traces the design of the building that will replace these galleries. It starts with Allied Works' conceptual sketches from 2022 and runs through the finished renderings by Allied Works and Unknown Studio Landscape Architecture & Urban Design. For six weeks, you can see the last touring show in the current museum and the plans for the next one on the same visit.
The talks and performances fill up during this window too:
- November 7, 1 p.m.: Paw Prints: Cats and the Floating World in Leonhardt Auditorium.
- November 14, noon and 3 p.m.: Ballet Vero Beach presents Interpretive Dance Series: A Retrospective.
- November 30, 4:30 p.m.: The 45th International Lecture Series opens with Noriko Murai of Sophia University in Tokyo on Cross-Cultural Currents: Water in 19th-Century Japanese, French, and American Art. The series continues January 11 with Andreas Marks of the Minneapolis Institute of Art and February 1 with travel writer Pico Iyer, all tied to the Hokusai exhibition.
December 12 Is Riverside Park's Busiest Day
One Saturday stacks nearly everything in the park. On December 12, the museum hosts Holidays at the Museum, a free day of family tours, art activities in the studios, and music and dance by local youth and community groups. The fall Art School term ends the same day.
Across the park, Riverside Theatre has Nutcracker on the Indian River at 2 p.m. and Nutcracker For All at 7 p.m. That evening performance comes after the December 10 and 11 shows of Nutcracker on the Indian River. Riverside Children's Theatre follows with CATS: Young Actor's Edition from December 17 to 19.
Because of the construction, parking and arrival work differently than in past seasons. VBMA says it has added a vehicle turnaround, a pedestrian walkway, and accessible parking spaces, and it asks visitors to follow the signs on site. On a day with free museum admission and two Nutcracker shows, expect that new layout to be busy.
What Stays After the Galleries Go Dark
The building isn't being torn down completely. The project fact sheet lists 68,000 square feet of new construction, while 22,000 square feet of the existing building will stay in use for art storage, shipping, and receiving. The galleries close, but part of the current structure carries on behind the scenes.
Work is already well along. Vero Beach 32963 reported in early August that foundations and retaining walls were being poured. The museum also unveiled a 30-foot, L-shaped mock-up wall at the northwest corner of the site, made of custom concrete that uses Florida sand with beach and oyster shells. The sculpture parks and café are closed indefinitely while the campus work continues.
The Art School has a winter term listed for January 4 through February 6, 2027, and the museum says course information is still to come. As of March 2026, the Museum in the Garden campaign reported $110 million raised toward its $126 million goal. That total includes a $2 million grant for the Indian River Community Foundation Ceramics Center, which will have a 1,000-square-foot studio. The museum says the new building and campus will open in 2028.
Until then, the last chance to see Prosek's work in the Holmes Gallery is Sunday, October 25, and the last date when every gallery has a show is January 3.
Riverside Park has always been part of what makes Riomar Riomar, and Team Provancher will keep following the museum's progress toward 2028. If you're wondering how the new campus could fit into your own plans on the island, start with an instant home valuation and we'll talk through the rest.
