This Season the Four Arts Runs Through the Dixon Building

The Lake Trail has shifted east where it used to run through the Society of the Four Arts campus, as the Palm Beach Daily News reported in May. WLRN reported that the north sidewalk on Royal Palm Way is also closed for the length of the construction. Past the closures, the Esther B. O'Keeffe and John E. Rovensky buildings are in the middle of the largest renovation since the Four Arts was founded in 1936. Those two buildings held the galleries, the Gubelmann Auditorium, the Children's Library and the offices.

The 2026–27 season is still going ahead. Programs from the closed buildings have moved to Royal Poinciana Chapel, Palm Beach Day Academy, the Flagler Museum, the Norton Museum of Art and the Bunker Artspace. Back on campus, the Dixon Education Building on the open east side carries more of the season than it ever has. For this one year, it is the building that holds the Four Arts together.

The west side is closed until late fall 2027

The renovation is funded by the Four Arts' Centennial Campaign, a $250 million effort that covers both construction and endowment. Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners leads the design, with Spina O'Rourke as local architect of record and Suffolk as general contractor. WLRN reported in May that construction is expected to finish in late fall 2027, ahead of the 2027–28 season.

That leaves one full season without the auditorium or the galleries. The east side of the campus stays open as usual: the King Library, the Dixon Education Building, the Demonstration Garden and the Philip Hulitar Sculpture Garden. Every program that used to happen in the west buildings has either moved off campus or moved east.

The big-room programs moved to two island venues

The Gubelmann Auditorium hosted the concerts, the O'Keeffe Speaker Series, and the high-definition broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera and National Theatre Live. Those programs are now split between two venues a short drive apart. Most live music and the speaker series go to Royal Poinciana Chapel at 60 Cocoanut Row. Films and recorded broadcasts go to Palm Beach Day Academy on Seaview Avenue. On the island, Palm Beach Day Academy's address is its Upper School campus at 241 Seaview Avenue.

The Four Arts is putting the Chapel's pipe organ to use with two concert organists, one in an organ chamber music program and one in a solo recital with a pre-concert lecture on the instrument. The rest of the concert lineup, as listed by Palmer PB in its September season preview, includes pianist Gabriela Montero, the Aaron Diehl Trio with soprano Mikaela Bennett, Les Violons du Roy with mandolinist Avi Avital, the bluegrass duo Dailey & Vincent, and the Viano String Quartet with pianist Sir Stephen Hough. Artistic Advisor Wu Han returns to curate a Violin Festival on February 17, 21 and 24.

Ticket prices at the temporary screening venue follow the usual model. Reservations are required. A Friday film costs $10 and is free for members. A Met broadcast costs $30, or $25 for members and $15 for students with ID.

Dixon now carries more than it was built for

The Dixon Education Building already had a full schedule before the renovation. According to WLRN, the Four Arts held more than 500 events in 2025 that brought over 100,000 visitors to Palm Beach. That total included about a hundred free and low-cost classes at Dixon, covering bridge lessons, introductions to opera, shell crafting, painting, cooking and music. Dixon was the classroom building, and the headline programs happened in the auditorium next door.

This season Dixon takes on several jobs at once. A new Broadway cabaret series, hosted by Tony Award nominee Alan Campbell and featuring Seth Rudetsky, Faith Prince and Norbert Leo Butz, plays in Dixon's Johnson Hall. The companion lecture series for the Violin Festival, "The Art of the Violin," is held at Dixon. Campus on the Lake keeps its lectures, master classes and workshops there, with themes that include Creating a Nation, Creating Legacies and the Tomorrow's Breakthroughs Today Scientific Symposium Series, which is presented with the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation. On December 8, Clive Aslet speaks there on Old Westbury Gardens and the Phipps family.

Dixon also serves as the second room for the speaker series. Each O'Keeffe lecture at the Chapel will be simulcast to Dixon, and members can livestream the lectures and other programs and watch the recordings later in the season. In April, the Friday films and live theatrical broadcasts move from Palm Beach Day Academy into Dixon for the end of the season. And the Children's Library, which used to be on the Rovensky building's second floor, is now on Dixon's second floor and holds its regular programs in the Hulitar Garden.

So a member who parks at the Four Arts this winter will mostly be walking into Dixon, whether the event is a lecture, a cabaret, a livestreamed talk, a children's story hour or, by spring, a Friday film.

The art moved outdoors

With the O'Keeffe galleries closed, the season's in-person exhibition is outside. The High Life: Contemporary Photography and the Birds shows work by more than 50 international photographers in the Philip Hulitar Sculpture Garden from December 5 through May 2, 2027. The garden already has an audience of its own: WLRN counted about 50,000 visitors there in 2025. German photographer Kristin Schnell, whose work is in the show, arrives in March as the season's Beyer Artist-in-Residence. She will give a lecture and teach a five-part workshop on how photographs are built.

The garden is also where Carols on the Lawn returns, sung by Palm Beach Atlantic University's Chamber Choir. Exhibition on Screen fills in for the closed galleries with a program on Palm Beach artist Sandra Thompson, alongside films on Whistler, Renoir and David Hockney.

The opening weeks fall in this order:

1. Monday, Nov. 2: Ariane Csonka Comstock's A Passion for Opera workshop, Campus on the Lake
2. Friday, Nov. 6: The Cycle of Love, the first Friday film, at Palm Beach Day Academy
3. Saturday, Nov. 7: Mozart's Così fan tutte, the first Met broadcast
4. Wednesday, Dec. 2: Seth Rudetsky and Friends Broadway cabaret, Johnson Hall
5. Saturday, Dec. 5: The High Life opens in the Hulitar Sculpture Garden
6. Tuesday, Dec. 8: Clive Aslet on the Phipps family, Dixon
7. Wednesday, Dec. 9: Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Baroque Concertos, Royal Poinciana Chapel

The O'Keeffe Speaker Series lineup has not been announced yet. The live calendar at fourarts.org is the place to check venues before each event.

What the 2027 buildings change

The season is split across venues because of what is being built. The rebuilt Gubelmann Auditorium will drop from 700 seats to about 650. The lost seats make room for a bigger stage and the hall's first real backstage, with dressing rooms, green rooms and a loading dock. The floor will be raked more steeply, and the columns that blocked views from the parterre sections will come out. In the galleries, removing the 1940s drop ceilings will open them to 20-foot ceilings with the original wood beams exposed.

The Children's Library will move into a three-story addition on the north side of the Rovensky building. Its new space will be nearly 50 percent larger than its old second-floor rooms and will have its own entrance for the first time. New covered arcades along the O'Keeffe building's north side will lead in from the parking lots and the royal palm allée. Inside, the building will get its first dedicated box office and more restrooms.

Once the work is done in late fall 2027, the headline programs move back west. Until then, the season runs through the Chapel, Seaview Avenue and the Dixon Education Building. More island news is collected on our Palm Beach neighborhood page.

For homeowners coming back to the island for the season, Holland Group can get the house ready before the first Chapel concert, from the post-summer inspection to scheduling vendors through our network of more than 150 providers. Book a Call and we will take care of the house so you can get to the season.