As The Baker Museum approaches its 25th anniversary, there’s a sense of embracing history as well as aligning with Artis—Naples Artistic and Music Director Alexander Shelley’s theme “E Pluribus Unum – from many into one.” This 25th anniversary has the happy coincidence of being in the same year as the United States’ 250th anniversary, and Artis—Naples is ready, he said: “The overarching message for next season is that we’re going to be diving into the lead-in to the celebration of America 250.” Courtney McNeil, museum director and chief curator of the museum, is ready, too. The Baker Museum offerings range from an artist’s work from 100 years before this anniversary – the coolly sophisticated Tamara de Lempicka – to a retrospective on the deeply defined American photographs of Ansel Adams. Tamara de Lempicka October 2025 through February 2026 De Lempicka (1894-1980) helped to define the 1920s glamour and drama in art deco. She captured 1920s postwar Paris and the cosmopolitan sheen of Hollywood, but always with characters that keep a beguiling distance. This exhibition is one McNeil is especially excited about. It blends works from her post-Cubist work in 1920s Paris to her later melancholic still lifes and interiors in the U.S. and Mexico. It has four works owned by Patty and Jay Baker that have been lent to the museum before with works from both American and international museums, giving it a rich depth. “The sleek surfaces of her paintings is what I find really compelling, and the way her people almost seem like they’re made out of metal — so steely and imperturbable. And just so cool — so effortlessly cool,” McNeil observed. De Lempicka’s work was collected heavily in Europe for decades, and there have been several retrospectives of her work there. “But this is the first featured exhibition in the United States ever,” she emphasized. The exhibition is organized by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and curated by Furio Rinaldi, curator-in-charge of The Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, The Fine Art Museums of San Francisco. Linling Lu November 2025 through April 2026 Baltimore-based artist Lu is creating new paintings for an exhibition inspired by three works scheduled in the Naples Philharmonic’s 2025-26 Masterworks concerts: Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, best known as the “New World” Symphony, Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3. Lu paints sonically inspired tondos — circular works — that are hard-edge and with concentric rings of color that appear to vibrate. She draws the shades of color in her paintings from the sounds she hears in classical music. “The music she’s responding to is music she’s familiar with and has already heard many times, so she is responding to the piece of music itself, not the specific performance,” explained McNeil, who curated this exhibition. Still, she continued, what is coming will be paintings especially created for The Baker Museum exhibition. They’re guaranteed to demonstrate L...