Designed by fsc student and agb design fellow, riley karau

Starting in the 1950s, a period when America was still deep in the throes of segregation, the Florida Highwaymen defied all odds. A prodigious group of African-American artists who plied their trade painting Florida’s landscapes and sold their work from the trunks of their cars, the Highwaymen discovered success in simplicity. With landscapes that read today like a land remembered, laced with nostalgia, the Highwaymen found a niche to call their own, producing an estimated 200,000 works that have become beloved features of local homes, hotels, restaurants, and museum collections across the region today. The Highwaymen have become a storied part of Florida’s history.

At the same time, though, the art history of the Highwaymen offers a strange — but not altogether unsurprising — case. When one mentions “the art of the Highwaymen” to many Floridians, their ears perk up and their eyes brighten, with a glowing and knowing fondness for homegrown art. When you mention “the art of the Highwaymen” to non-Floridians, most look at you with little or no recognition of what you are talking about.

In this first installation of works on long-term loan from the collection of the Woodsby family, we start appropriately at the beginning, with the rise of the Highwaymen and a focus on the two founding figures of this much-loved yet under-sung art movement, Alfred Hair and Harold Newton.