Walk Western Green or cut through one of the pocket parks off Main Street this week and you will likely see a base being poured or a POA maintenance crew leveling a plinth where nothing stood a month ago. That work is not routine grounds maintenance. Between September 15 and October 15, 2026, roughly ten new outdoor sculptures are being delivered and mounted across Rosemary Beach ahead of the Fifth Biennial Rosemary Beach Sculpture Exhibition, which opens to the public on Saturday, October 17.

Most residents already know the sculpture walk exists. Fewer know how it actually works, and that gap matters. This is not a rotating art fair where everything ships out when the show ends. During the fourth biennial, which ran from October 19, 2024 through October 19, 2025, six of the fifteen sculptures on view were part of the permanent collection. They stayed. For the past eleven months, while the town waited between cycles, those six permanent pieces were the only sculptures left standing on the greens. Every two years, a fresh slate of temporary work gets installed alongside them, and by the time the cycle closes, a piece or two from that temporary group sometimes joins the permanent collection for good. The show landing this fall is, in part, an audition.

What's Landing This Month

The Fifth Biennial RBSE is organized by a volunteer committee under the Rosemary Beach Property Owners Association, with Alisa Ghazvini serving as project director alongside ten other volunteers. Artists who submitted work by the March 2026 deadline were notified of selection by April 30, and the finalists have spent the past several weeks shipping or driving sculptures to Rosemary Beach for installation. A private Patrons Celebration Party for artists, donors, and patrons is set for Thursday, October 15, two days before the public opening.

Selected artists receive a $3,000 honorarium once their piece is delivered and mounted. On top of that, the exhibition awards $4,000 for first place, $2,000 for second, and $1,000 for a People's Choice winner voted on by the public. That prize structure is why artists ship work from well beyond the Panhandle. The fourth biennial, which closed in October 2025, brought sculptures in from Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, a genuinely national roster of work landing on a town that covers roughly 107 acres.

The Six That Never Left

Here is the part that changes how the walk reads. The 2024-25 exhibition description lists a piece called Bradbury, by sculptor Kirsten Kainz, among the six permanent works. It was purchased from the 2021-22 exhibition and donated in memory of Jan Stevens. In other words, a sculpture that arrived as a one-year loan stayed because someone bought it and gave it back to the town.

That is the mechanism residents walk past without necessarily clocking it. Each biennial cycle brings in temporary work under a consignment arrangement, meaning the artist and the exhibition agree in advance whether a piece is for sale or on loan only, with sale prices frequently included in the submission. When the exhibition ends, most sculptures go home with their artists or to private buyers. A handful get purchased and folded into the permanent collection instead, at which point they stop being temporary residents and become part of the fixed backdrop the next biennial has to sit alongside.

So when the ten new pieces go up this October, they are not just filling empty lawn space. They are being placed in direct company with the six works the town already decided to keep, and in two years, the same test happens again.

Four Biennials, One Growing Collection

The jump from 14 selected pieces in 2021-22 to a record submission pool by 2024-25 says something about how the exhibition's reputation has traveled. Two of the artists in the most recent temporary lineup, Earl Dismuke and Cecilia Moseley, came out of Mississippi's sculpture programs, Dismuke a co-founder of the Yokna Sculpture Trail in Oxford and Moseley a University of Mississippi and LSU-trained sculptor whose public installations have already reached audiences across the South. That kind of artist is not submitting to a small-town lawn show on a whim. They are submitting because past cycles proved the exhibition sells work and, occasionally, keeps it.

Who Actually Runs This

The exhibition is a nonprofit arts organization backed by the POA, but it does not operate in isolation. RBSE partners with the Cultural Arts Alliance of Walton County as part of Art Month South Walton, which places Rosemary Beach's sculpture walk inside a larger regional push for public art rather than treating it as a private amenity. That partnership is also why the exhibition has staying power past any one committee member's tenure. The show's founder, original Rosemary Beach homeowner Tom Kramer, launched the first exhibition back in 2017 and has since moved on. The committee structure that replaced his direct involvement, now eleven volunteers deep, is built to outlast any single organizer.

That first 2017 show is worth remembering for one more reason. It included a three-dimensional sculpture by George Rodrigue, the New Orleans artist behind the Blue Dog, unveiled at Town Hall Courtyard with the artist's family in attendance. The exhibition that a first-time visitor might assume is a recent tourism add-on actually has nine years of continuous programming behind it, with a founding tie to one of the most recognized names in Southern contemporary art.

Walking It Yourself

The exhibition is designed for a self-guided visit, not a docent tour. A printed catalogue with a site map lays out where each piece sits across the town's parks, gardens, and greens, and the free Otocast smartphone app pairs each sculpture with a short audio introduction recorded by the artist. Past cycles have made the catalogue available at spots like Hidden Lantern Bookstore on North Barrett Square, so picking one up on the way to coffee is part of the routine rather than a special errand.

Full details on this year's finalist list, sculpture locations, and any public programming around the October 17 opening are being posted at rosemarybeachsculpture.com as they're confirmed. Because the exhibition changes its roster every two years, it is worth checking that page directly rather than relying on last cycle's map.

The Rest of the Fall Calendar

If a walk through the new installations turns into an evening out, Barrett Square is the obvious next stop. Gallion's runs a split-shift concept that catches newer residents off guard, family-friendly lunch service until 2:30 in the afternoon, then an 18-and-older dinner room starting at 3, with a wine and spirits list that ranges from the Buffalo Trace collection up through Screaming Eagle Cabernet.

Mark one more date on the same calendar. Rosemary Beach Uncorked, the town's annual food and wine festival, celebrates its 15th year on Saturday, November 14, 2026, from 1 to 4 p.m., with participating restaurants, wine, and live music on the green. Between the sculpture opening on October 17 and Uncorked on November 14, this fall gives residents a four-week stretch where the town's public spaces are doing double duty as both an open-air gallery and a food and wine calendar.

The Point of Walking Past It Twice

The easy read on a sculpture walk is decoration, something pleasant to notice on the way to the beach access. The more accurate read, once you know that six current pieces started as one-year loans and stayed, is that Rosemary Beach uses this biennial cycle to make a real decision about what its public spaces look like permanently. The ten pieces going up this month are on a one-year trial that will not be repeated until 2028. A couple of them may still be standing on these same greens well after that. Most will not. Walking the exhibition this fall means watching that decision get made in real time, one installation at a time, rather than reading about it after the fact.

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