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Imagining Florida
By Denise Colson
Boca Raton Museum of Art is presenting “Imagining Florida,” a show that gathers more than 200 remarkable artworks that celebrate how the Sunshine State has inspired artists through three centuries. Most of these artists never lived full-time in Florida, although a few were Florida-born and raised. There is also a broad range of subject matter presented, including landscapes, the state’s exuberant flora and fauna, the rigors of industrialization, WPA mural projects, social issues, and even 1950s and 1960s American kitsch. Some artworks tell the story of the state’s history and people, while others were created to lure tourists and generate commerce.
Bruce Mozert, Untitled (Mowing Eel Grass, Silver Springs Publicity Still, c. 1950, gelatin silver print, 16” x 20.” Collection of Lisa Stone © Estate of Robert Bruce Mozert.
“‘Imagining Florida’ digs deeper than previous Florida-themed exhibitions,” said Irvin Lippman, the executive director of Boca Raton Museum of Art. “From pristine natural landscapes that have long ago disappeared to its identity as a hyper-tourism destination, from wild frontier outposts to the mid-century Space Age boom, from the deeply rooted Seminole and Miccosukee heritage of Florida to the historic African American communities, these imaginings come together like never before to create a powerful time capsule.”
Lippman added, “‘Imagining Florida’ should serve as a point of much discussion about the vitality of the art scene in Florida that began not with art fairs in Miami in the 2000s but in the late 1800s when Henry Flagler created an art colony in St. Augustine and in the early 1900s when James Deering built Vizcaya.”
Three years in the making, the exhibition was guest-curated by Jennifer Hardin and Gary Monroe. Many of their selections have rarely been seen and some have never been exhibited at a museum until now.
The artworks in the show have been selected from such important institutions as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Hirshhorn Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Henry Morrison Flagler Museum in Palm Beach, Wolfsonian-FIU in Miami Beach, Williams College Art Museum, Harn Museum of Art in Gainesville, Cummer Museum of Art in Jacksonville, Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, and the Frederick Remington Art Museum. Some of the prominent collections represented include the collection of Sam and Robbie Vickers, the collection of Cici and Hyatt Brown, the Scott Schlesinger Collection, Philip Pearlstein and the Drapkin Collections.
Lewis Hine, Young Cigarmakers, 1909, gelatin silver print, 11” x 14.” Collection of Trenam Law, Tampa, Florida.
Visitors are transported through Florida’s history via paintings, photographs and drawings from the 18th to the mid-20th century from artists, photographers, naturalists and modernists, including Milton Avery, Martin Johnson Heade, John Singer Sargent, Winslow Homer, Laura Woodward, Purvis Young, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Doris Lee, Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand, John James Audubon, Frederic Remington, William Bartram, Sally Michel, Thomas Moran, George Catlin, Frederick Carl Frieseke and George de Forest Brush.
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Winslow Homer, The Shell Heap, 1904, watercolor and graphite on paper, 19 5/8” x 13 7/8.” Collection of Art Bridges.
Idyllic landscapes of Floridian nature, such as a 1915 colored photograph by Esmond G. Barnhill, coexists with the scenes of Native Indian hunting cranes by George de Forest Brush and the impressionistic scenes of a Florida countryside by Winslow Homer. Other works feature scenes from daily life, such as a Lewis Hine photo from 1909 in which a young cigar maker poses at a factory in Tampa. It shares the stage with images of groups of people enjoying the bounties of Florida’s legendary warm climate, such as the Burgert Brothers’ photograph in which a couple is canoeing on the Hillsborough River in 1922, as well as the photograph in which a family shares a picnic afternoon on Longboat Key in the late 1950s by Joseph Janney Steinmetz.
Esmond G. Barnhill, Untitled, c. 1915, uranium pigment glass plate, 9 ½” x 7 ½.” Collection of Lisa Stone. Photo: Andrew Gilbert.
Of note in the exhibition are several advertising photographs from the 1950s. One shows a handsome young model cutting seaweed from the bottom of the sea with lawnmower. In another iconic scene from that same decade, Betty Page, captured by the lens of Bunny Yeager, poses aboard a boat in Key Biscayne.
“Imagining Florida” is on view through March 24th, 2019, at Boca Raton Museum of Art. 501 Plaza Real, Boca Raton, Fla. 33432. | www.bocamuseum.org.
Denise Colson is an arts writer based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
