The Cultural Council for Palm Beach County has confirmed its largest-ever Open Studios weekend: more than 140 local artists across 60+ studios on Saturday, May 2 and Sunday, May 3, 2026, running from noon to 5 p.m. each day. Admission is free. The event lands in the post-season transition window — the first weekend in May, after the Worth Avenue galleries thin their inventory and before the summer Hampton circuit pulls collectors north — and it has quietly become one of the most efficient direct-from-artist acquisition windows on the Palm Beach calendar.
The numbers are the headline. 140 participating artists is a record for the program, the Cultural Council confirmed in its event announcement. The 60-plus studios span Lake Worth Beach, West Palm Beach, Lake Park, Boynton Beach, Delray Beach, Boca Raton and Jupiter — a geographic spread that effectively covers every primary collector zip code in the county. The format is self-guided: visitors download the Cultural Council route map at palmbeachculture.com and assemble their own circuit. No tickets, no reservations, no gallery commission. Original works sell directly from the artists in the studios where they were made.
Featured names this year include mixed-media artist Ilene Gruber Adams at Studio on 10th in Lake Park — known for collage-driven figural compositions — and stained-glass artist Iva Kalikow in Central Palm Beach County, whose architectural panels carry into private commissions. Several of the participating studios are by-appointment-only operations during the rest of the year, opening their doors only for the Open Studios weekend and for MOSAIC’s annual May programming. For collectors who have not previously walked these spaces, the weekend is the access window.
The event sits inside MOSAIC 2026 — the Cultural Council’s ninth-year May arts festival, which programs events across the county through the month. MOSAIC and Open Studios share infrastructure, marketing, and the Cultural Council’s logistics team, and the two together represent one of the largest publicly-funded arts programming pushes of the South Florida calendar year.
For Palm Beach collectors, the weekend functions as a pricing-discovery moment more than a pure transaction one. Direct-from-artist work prices below typical Worth Avenue gallery markups, and the studio visit itself often surfaces unfinished work, in-progress commissions, and pieces the artist has held out of the gallery system. Several Worth Avenue and Royal Poinciana Way galleries quietly send buyers to the weekend each year specifically to see what their represented artists are producing outside the consigned inventory.
The collateral question Palm Beach Loan’s clients have started asking — whether locally-sourced original art holds value as a borrowable asset — depends almost entirely on the artist’s secondary market. Open Studios is where that secondary market is built. Mid-career Palm Beach County names with documented studio visits, gallery representation history, and consistent annual production are the work that holds resale value. Names without representation, without museum acquisition history, and without auction records do not. The weekend is the cleanest single moment in the year to walk that distinction in person.
Palm Beach County Open Studios runs Saturday, May 2 from 12 to 5 p.m. and Sunday, May 3 from 12 to 5 p.m. Maps and the full participating-artist roster are available at palmbeachculture.com/open-studios. The Cultural Council recommends building a 4-to-6 studio route per day given travel time across the county. Several artists have confirmed via the Cultural Council’s Instagram account that they will hold designated commissioned-work hours during the weekend for collectors who want to discuss specific projects.
Sources: Cultural Council for Palm Beach County — Open Studios, Cultural Council — MOSAIC and Open Studios Announcement, Palm Beach Illustrated, WFLX.
From the Borro desk: The Open Studios weekend lands inside a broader 2026 luxury market cycle that has hardened into a K-shape. For the macro frame — Borro’s State of the Luxury Asset Market — May 2026.
Related coverage: Worth Avenue’s gallery circuit map · Palm Beach’s record Q1 2026 closings