Through March 24, 2019, the Boca Raton Museum of Art presents “Imagining Florida: History and Myth in the Sunshine State,” an expansive exhibition of more than 200 works spanning three centuries that explore Florida’s cultural and visual history. The show traces how artists have imagined the state’s landscapes, people and industries, from early colonial settlements to mid-century development and contemporary interpretations.
Florida’s presence in American art has deep roots. In the late 1800s, an active art colony grew in St. Augustine, fostered in part by developer and railroad entrepreneur Henry Flagler. That momentum continued into the 20th century at sites such as industrialist James Deering’s Vizcaya estate, where artists and patrons converged and contributed to a regional visual identity.
The exhibition brings together works drawn from major museum collections across the United States, including pieces lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Hirshhorn Museum. Many of the works on view have never before been displayed in a public museum setting, giving visitors a rare opportunity to see diverse representations of Florida’s environment and culture.
Photography in the show highlights both everyday life and staged moments: Bunny Yeager’s “Bettie Page – at Africa USA – Boca Raton, FL” captures a moment of popular culture intersecting with local places; Burgert Brothers’ photograph “A couple prepares to launch a canoe on the Hillsborough River (1922)” documents recreational life on Florida waterways; and Joseph Steinmetz’s “Unidentified developer with a scale model of the Longboat Harbour Condominium development (1969)” reflects the state’s postwar boom and changing coastline.
Paintings and hand-colored etchings offer botanical studies, portraiture and landscape scenes. Works drawn from the National Gallery of Art’s collections include detailed botanical plates alongside oil paintings. Notable examples in the exhibition include Albert Ernest Backus’ “Sewall’s Point,” Doris Lee’s “Florida Vacation,” and John Singer Sargent’s “Basin with Sailor, Villa Vizcaya, Miami, Florida.” Alongside fine art, the exhibition presents a selection of Florida curiosities—objects that helped shape tourist impressions of the state—such as alligator lamps, souvenir television trays and colorful road maps.
The roster of artists and photographers represented spans a wide range of styles and eras. Visitors will find works by Milton Avery, Martin Johnson Heade and Winslow Homer; landscape and coastal scenes by Laura Woodward and Thomas Moran; and depictions of frontier and indigenous subjects by George Catlin and Frederic Remington. The exhibition also includes naturalists and illustrators such as John James Audubon and William Bartram, decorative arts by Louis Comfort Tiffany, and modern and contemporary voices like Purvis Young, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Frederick Frieseke, George de Forest Brush and Sally Michel. Together these varied perspectives reveal how Florida has been imagined—as exotic wilderness, resort playground, commercial frontier and cultivated landscape—shaping both myth and history in the Sunshine State.
Imagining Florida brings historical artworks, documentary photographs and popular ephemera into conversation, offering a layered and nuanced portrait of how artists and makers have seen and shaped Florida over time. The exhibition invites visitors to reconsider familiar images and discover lesser-known works that illuminate the state’s complex past and cultural legacy.