The Midnight Garden

Visionary Art Collective (VAC) is an artist-led platform that runs themed exhibitions and publishes New Visionary Magazine. "The Midnight Garden" is a four-day NYC pop-up exhibition curated by Jessica Libor, the Philadelphia-based artist and founder of Era Contemporary.

The brief centers on cultivation, transformation, and unseen processes of growth — both in nature and within ourselves — exploring the garden as a metaphor for creative practice, cycles of renewal, and the duality between control and wildness. The themes invite both literal botanical work and conceptual interpretation.

The exhibition runs August 20–23, 2026 at 61 Atlantic Ave, a ground-level gallery in Brooklyn. A virtual component runs alongside the physical pop-up for 4 to 6 weeks on the VAC website. Selected artists are also featured in New Visionary Magazine and listed on Artsy through Warnes Contemporary gallery — meaning selection produces both physical exhibition placement and ongoing online representation.

Eligibility is open to U.S.-based visual artists at all career levels. Accepted media span both 2D and 3D: painting, drawing, photography, digital, prints, fiber art, collage, mixed media, sculpture, ceramics, and installation. Film and video are excluded.

Entry fees are tiered by submission size: $25 for 1–2 images, $30 for 3–4, $35 for 5–6. The 2026 deadline is May 31.