Every fall, the Olbrich Botanical Gardens presents an outdoor nighttime art exhibit called Gleam, which features large-scale light installations by local, regional, and international designers. We visited the first Gleam Exhibit in 2016 and have gone back several times over the years. This year we wandered through Olbrich’s 16-acre garden and enjoyed the tenth anniversary show.
This year’s exhibit started with a walk through the tropical Bolz Conservatory before continuing out into the gardens. It was quite warm and humid in the conservatory, reminding me of the weather we frequently had in Madison as the summer of 2025 stretched itself well into the fall. The art installation, called Luminous Echos, was supposedly inspired by orchids and, although I wouldn’t have guessed orchids, it was still very colorful.
Mouse over the individual photos in galleries to see captions.
Click on any one to enlarge, then use arrows to scroll through the rest of the images.
Stepping outside into the gardens we were greeted by LOVE Letters. The artist statement said, “What the world needs now is LOVE, sweet love.” You may recall those lyrics from a 60s song by the great song-writing team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Leaving that love behind, we continued down the path to find trees with Electric Roots.
One of the larger exhibits was called Reflections in Nature. It looked to me like a colorful swirling video projected onto the trees. If you watch carefully at the end of the video below you will even see some deer.
An exhibit that I really enjoyed was called Tetra. A myriad of dots and lines of light were projected from behind onto spandex panels. Visitors were encouraged to touch and stretch the panels. It was fun to watch the kids interact with this work without hearing their parents say “Don’t touch the art!”
Then we came across Astral Relics of the Great North Woods. I don’t think I can explain this so here’s how it’s described by the artist:
In a forest clearing, primordial spirits of ancient trees harness the magic of the Northern Lights. From old growth forests
to the celestial majesty of the Aurora Borealis, Wisconsin’s Northwoods is a place of beauty and mystery.
I still can’t explain it but I can point out that hidden in the middle of these Astral Relics was a roiling, boiling cauldron spewing out steam. I’ve never seen that up north!
Crossing the glowing red Cathedral we made our way over to the Thai Pavilion. Although the pavilion is not a Gleam art installation, I had to include it because it was beautifully refinished last year. The pavilion features gold leaf etchings, a lacquer finish, and very intricate decorations. There are only four such pavilions located outside of Thailand and this is the only one in the continental United States. The others are located in Hawaii, Germany and Norway. Floating in the nearby reflecting pond are shapes that mimic the gold leaf pattern in the pavilion.
Near the Thai Pavilion is Birds Fly Around With You, which is modeled after Wisconsin’s state bird, the American Robin. Twenty-four birds are displayed here in different positions of flight. People, mostly kids, ran inside the circle causing different birds to light up.
From a distance the exhibit called The Beholder looks like stars in the sky. It consists of over 1200 small plant samples molded in resin that hang overhead. People who enjoy macro photography might be intrigued by these tiny objects.
Wave is an exhibit where people moving around create “ripples” of light just like tossing a stone in a pond would create ripples of water. This is captured in the video below.
My favorite work, Reflections Between Roots and Stars, was the last one we visited. At this station you can see lights moving in the sky overhead, like searchlights. Then they move down and start reflecting off a pile of shiny balls that look almost metallic. The lights keep moving and the colors keep changing. It was very mesmerizing! The description of this installation encourages you to wander “through shifting projections that echo nature’s patterns—roots, branches, constellations.” After a while the lights returned to the sky.
You can tell this was my favorite because I took many photos trying to capture the various colors and reflections. In one of the images you can even see what might very well be the shadow of a photographer.
All in all, a great exhibit.