Through March 24, 2019, the Boca Raton Museum of Art presents a major exhibition that traces Florida’s cultural and visual history through more than 200 works spanning three centuries: “Imagining Florida: History and Myth in the Sunshine State.” The show highlights how Florida’s landscapes, communities and curiosities have inspired artists from the 18th century to the modern era. Florida’s artistic presence began to coalesce with the late-1800s art colony in St. Augustine, fostered by developer and railroad magnate Henry Flagler, and continued into the 20th century at sites such as industrialist James Deering’s Vizcaya estate.
The exhibition brings together works borrowed from prominent collections across the United States, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Hirshhorn Museum. Many of the pieces will be seen in a museum context for the first time, offering visitors a rare opportunity to view historic and lesser-known works side by side.
Photographic highlights include Bunny Yeager’s “Bettie Page – at Africa USA – Boca Raton, FL,” archival images by the Burgert Brothers such as “A couple prepares to launch a canoe on the Hillsborough River (1922),” and Joseph Steinmetz’s documentary photograph “Unidentified developer with a scale model of the Longboat Harbour Condominium development (1969).” These photographs capture moments of everyday life, leisure and development that shaped Florida’s public image.
Paintings and hand-colored etchings feature botanical studies from the National Gallery of Art collection, Albert Ernest Backus’s atmospheric “Sewall’s Point,” Doris Lee’s genteel scene “Florida Vacation” and John Singer Sargent’s intimate view “Basin with Sailor, Villa Vizcaya, Miami, Florida.” Complementing these works is a cabinet of Florida curios — alligator lamps, souvenir television trays and colorful road maps — that illustrates how souvenirs and decorative objects have contributed to the state’s mythmaking.
The exhibition also includes works by an international and diverse group of artists and photographers whose visions helped shape understandings of Florida: Milton Avery, Martin Johnson Heade, Winslow Homer, Laura Woodward, Purvis Young, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Louis Comfort Tiffany, John James Audubon, Frederic Remington, William Bartram, Sally Michel, Thomas Moran, George Catlin, Frederick Frieseke and George de Forest Brush. Together their paintings, prints, photographs and objects create a layered narrative that examines both the real and imagined Florida.
“Imagining Florida” situates these works within themes of exploration, tourism, development, leisure and environment. By combining fine art, documentary photography and vernacular objects, the exhibition invites visitors to consider how images and artifacts have constructed Florida’s identity — from indigenous landscapes and scientific study to postcard-ready beaches and modern growth. The result is a richly varied portrait of a state whose visual history continues to evolve.