When looking at the photographs of Imogen Cunningham, we encounter images that reflect vital developments in 20th century art and photography — as well as the voice and eye of an undersung master of the camera. Cunningham was a female member of the male-dominated f/64 group of photographers and, despite the art-world’s tendency to overlook women artists, left her indelible stamp on the history and development of modern photography. In Seen & Unseen: Photographs by Imogen Cunningham, featuring work from across Cunningham’s expansive seven-decade career, we invite you to see why this American artist is heralded as one of the most important pioneers of photography — regardless of her gender.

An original Polk Museum of Art exhibition, Edward Hopper and Guy Pène du Bois: Painting the Real comprises approximately sixty works and focuses on Hopper and Pène du Bois, two very thematically different but stylistically-overlapping artists who became lifelong friends from the time of their earliest studies at the New York School of Art.

Author and historian Gary Monroe lectures at the Polk Museum of Art on the Highwaymen, 26 Florida-based Afican-American landscape painters who managed to thrive in the Jim Crow South. Consisting of 25 men and 1 woman, these mostly self-taught artists produced a uniquely Florida art movement that is prized by collectors and the public today.

Rodin’s sculptures not only revived for a new century the expressive and naturalistic styles of antiquity, using ancient Greek sculptors’ medium of choice, but also propelled figurative sculpture into the modern age with emotion and pathos never seen before in the sculpted form.

During our Members Reception, Dr. H Alexander Rich spoke about the renowned French artist and sculptor, Aguste Rodin and dove into Rodin’s life-long pursuit of art, his sometimes controversial career, and his monumental contributions and influence on modern sculpture.

Dr. Alexander Rich, in dialogue with Ron and Clark Woodsby, provide an in-depth overview of exhibition The Art of the Highwaymen: From the Woodsby Family Collection.

Who decides which artists grab all the textbook and museum attention? Which artists have been understudied and why? Indeed, for every Picasso or Pollock, there is a lesser known artist whose contributions have been overlooked or underseen. This month, we're bringing you a Crash Course that aspires to open up an important conversation about creating a more inclusive art history.

The Florida Highwaymen occupy an unusual and fascinating space in the history of art. 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.

Through Pinderhughes’ powerful camera lens, he makes clear that every human subject and every still life object has a story worth telling.

Just in time for the new year, we're bringing back one of our most popular, interactive virtual programs: Drinks with the Director: Why is THAT Famous?!?

Featuring more than 50 works in various media on the theme of children and animals in American figurative art, this original exhibition promises to delight the child in all of us.

Learn about Pinderhughes' decades-long career, his rise in the commercial and fine art photography worlds, and the inspirations behind the works in our upcoming original exhibition, Finding Meaning Within: The Photography of John Pinderhughes.

Learn about Pinderhughes' decades-long career, his rise in the commercial and fine art photography worlds, and the inspirations behind the works in our upcoming original exhibition, Finding Meaning Within: The Photography of John Pinderhughes.

Learn about Sacabo's decades-long career, the inspiration and mystery behind her works of art, and her ability to give voice to women of the past whose legacies still inspire us today.

Josephine Sacabo’s art is both of our time and embedded deeply in a time past. She is an acclaimed, New Orleans-based contemporary photographer whose body of work seems infused with a powerful nostalgia for the non-digital photographic forms and techniques of photography’s nascent years as an artistic medium in the previous two centuries.

In this Point of View Gallery Talk, Dr. H. Alexander Rich, Executive Director & Chief Curator of the Polk Museum of Art at Florida Southern College, walks viewers through the Museum’s latest exhibition, Toulouse-Lautrec & the Belle Époque.

Did you catch the last "Drinks with the Director: Why is THAT Famous?!?" It was hands-down one of our most fun programs EVER! If you did attend, you know how much fun we had, and chances are you still have so many more questions waiting to be answered! If you didn't, now is your chance to join in on the interactive fun!

Have you ever wondered about what is going on in a painting? What that daydreaming figure is thinking about? What story the artist is trying to tell? Have you ever spun an elaborate tale or envisioned what that conversation might be between those two very angry-looking people across a room?

“Through A Brush With HerStory, my goal is to resurrect these artists from the shadows of history and the depths of dusty archives. Obstacles of the day — whether it was lack of training, family obligations, or the restraints placed by society upon their practice of painting — did not stand in the way of their craft. They were not the shining stars of art but were the quiet undercurrent that existed with little or no forum to rise above the premier art establishments of the era.”

In this Point of View Gallery Talk, Dr. H. Alexander Rich, Executive Director & Chief Curator of the Polk Museum of Art at Florida Southern College, walks viewers through the process of examining a painting from the point of view of an art history student.

The exhibition delves deeply into the art, history, and culture of the Netherlands in the 17th century, a period of great wealth and cultural achievement for the Dutch people. In what was then already called a Golden Age, the Netherlands was a world power whose military fleet was growing and where trade, science, and the arts flourished as never before.

This exclusive exhibition features works selected from the private collection of the SC Johnson Company, most of which have never before traveled outside The Council House, the company’s international conference center in Racine, Wisconsin. Featuring works in all media and crossing all stylistic and geographic boundaries, this Polk Museum original exhibition offers audiences a deep dive into rarely seen art from one of the most consequential decades in art history.

This extraordinary exhibition, drawn entirely from the collection of the Reading Public Museum, explores the path to Impressionism through the nineteenth century, and the complex relationship between French Impressionism of the 1870s and 80s, and the American interpretation of the style in the decades that followed.

This exhibition is an examination of the spiritual objects themselves and their places within the cultures they come from and a story about the humanitarian work the Riches undertook in the process of acquiring the objects. The two histories are tied together intricately.

Executive Director and Chief Curator Dr. H. Alexander Rich discusses Inside the Masters' Studios: Richard Haas Dioramas.

Rabbi David Goldstein discusses works from the Polk Museum of Art's exhibition Painted Pages: Illuminated Manuscripts, 13th – 18th Centuries.

Artist Charles Edward Williams discusses his exhibition, SUN + LIGHT, a collection of works from the series Everyone Loves the Sunshine.

Part of our permanent collection, Hungry Planet and Material World are two exhibitions focused on showing viewers the differences between countries around the world in what they eat and what they own.

Faces in the Crowd is the second in a series of exhibitions showcasing the Polk Museum of Art at Florida Southern College’s latest acquisitions of figurative American art .

Rebels With a Cause presents outstanding selections of paintings, drawings and sculptures from The Huntsville Museum of Art’s recently acquired Sellars Collection of Art by American Women.

Choreographer and Director of the dance program at Florida Southern College, Erin LaSala, along with students from Florida Southern College’s dance program provide a performance based gallery talk focusing on the artist Edgar Degas.

Works by artist and University of Florida professor Richard Heipp occupy the gray area between the manually produced painting and the digitally reproduced image. They therefore position the viewer at the crossroads of looking and seeing. Heipp describes his paintings as photocentric; they are not intended to be merely based on mechanically produced images, but are instead air-brushed simulations of photographs and scanned objects. At first, these hyperrealistic paintings appear mechanically reproduced, but transform upon closer inspection. They perpetuate that deception between art and audience, pierce the veneer of first impressions, and force us to pause for a new and unexpected interpretation.

We all know a Picasso when we see one. We can recognize a Pollock drip painting from far across a gallery. We know a Vermeer from a mile away. But what about the spaces in which these works were produced? Have you ever wondered where the magic happens?  Where art history is literally made?

Sun + Light is a collection of works from the series Everyone Loves the Sunshine by contemporary visual artist Charles Edward Williams. The art in the Sun + Light juxtaposes Williams’ own personal encounters, past and present, with the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

Painted Pages: Illuminated Manuscripts 13th to 18th Centuries features more than thirty works from medieval Bibles, prayer books, psalters, books of hours, choir books, missals, breviaries, and lectionaries as well as a selection of rare Hebrew and Arabic manuscripts.

Florida Southern College, Erin LaSala, along with students from Florida Southern College’s dance program provide a performance based gallery talk focusing on the artist Edgar Degas.

Edgar Degas is one of the most familiar “name” artists in the entire history of art — and, this winter, the Polk Museum is excited to bring Degas to Lakeland in a wide-ranging exhibition of privately-owned works entitled Edgar Degas: The Private Impressionist.

Dr. Jennifer Moffitt explores the Polk Museum of Art's exhibition, "The Art of Romaine Brooks." The Art of Romaine Brooks, on loan from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, brings together 18 paintings and 32 drawings by the American expatriate artist Romaine Brooks (1874-1970). Dr. Moffitt is Assistant Professor of English at Florida Southern College.

The Polk Museum of Art at Florida Southern College hosted a panel discussion entitled Goya, Picasso & the Heritage of Spain: Exploring Spanish Culture in Florida from 1513 to Today. A distinguished panel of presenters from four institutions collaboratively developed this humanities-focused program to coincide with the Museum's Masters of Spain: Goya & Picasso exhibition on view from March 17-June 17, 2018.

Ken Rollins, President of Rollins Fine Art and PMA Director (1981-1994), explores the life and inspiration of artist William Schaaf.

Derek Menchan, professor of humanities, philosophy, and music at Polk State College leads a discussion on the omnipresence of music found in Chagall's work as well as universal themes of human morality.

This September, Chagall arrives at the Polk Museum of Art at Florida Southern College.

This September, the Polk Museum of Art at Florida Southern College proudly presents The Art of Romaine Brooks, a retrospective exhibition of a remarkable and under-acknowledged 20th century American artist.

The Von Wagner Code is a unique Polk Museum of Art curated exhibition inspired by the rediscovery of a damaged, long-lost painting on the Florida Southern College campus and the exciting search for answers about its origins.

Read more on the exhibition, Double Vision: Photocentric Paintings by Richard Heipp.

Read more on the exhibition, Lorrie Goulet: Seventy Years Carving.

Read more on the exhibition, The Von Wagner Code.

In this video, Polk Museum of Art curator Dr. H. Alexander Rich speaks with conservator Rustin Levenson about the mysterious painting at the center of “The Von Wagner Code” exhibition and about the painstaking stabilization process being undertaken to preserve it.

Richard Heipp shares his perspective on his retrospective exhibition, Double Vision: Photocentric Paintings.

Masters of Spain: Goya and Picasso brings a rare showcase of work by two of the greatest Spanish painters of all time. Experience this exhibition as an audio tour. 

In keeping with our mission to offer incomparable world-class art experiences for the community, this exhibition brings to Polk County a rare showcase of work by two of the greatest Spanish painters of all time. 

Painting A Nation: Hudson River School Landscapesfrom the Higdon Collection was organized by the Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, South Carolina.

In this exhibition of selected works from the Polk Museum of Art at Florida Southern College’s permanent collection, we will explore the concept of what it means to call something an American work of art. 

Long a household name, Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) is considered to be one of the great nineteenth-century masters. 

In most official art historical accounts of American art, it is not until the 1940s that American art found and identifiable home-grown style with the advent of Abstract Expressionism.

Long a household name, Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) is considered to be one of the great nineteenth-century masters.

Artist Bill Rutherfoord speaks about his work featured in the exhibition Allegory of No Region. 

Faces in the Crowd is the second in a series of exhibitions showcasing the latest acquisitions of figurative American art in the collection of the Polk Museum of Art at Florida Southern College (FSC).

The current exhibition, "Faces in the Crowd," is composed of a selection of the newest collection of Polk Museum of Art at Florida Southern College’s latest acquisitions of figurative American art. In order to display many of the works, our curatorial team choose to use the salon style hang.  But what is the origin of the salon style hang? 

Gino Miles speaks about the inspiration behind the work featured in his exhibition Bound Ascension.

Q&A with artist Jason Myers about his exhibition STATUS: fluid | dynamic.

Collections Manager and Registrar Loren Hicks photographs a piece of art from the Polk Museum of Art's Asian art collection.

Rembrandt van Rijn founded the most influential Academy that ever existed in the Dutch Republic (1581-1795), training dozens of painters to work in the “Rembrandtesque” manner.

The Figure in American Art offers but a mere introduction to the Museum’s newest works in the permanent collection.

Dr. H. Alexander Rich, Curator and Director of Galleries & Exhibitions, discusses the exhibition, "Renoir: Les Études."

Carlton Ward’s work is part of a long history of photographers focused on raising awareness about and influencing attitudes toward issues of conservation.

Collector George Lowe gives a Gallery Talk about the artwork from his collection featured in the exhibition One Collector's Dream.

Artist Josephine Sacabo speaks at the opening reception of her exhibition Lessons from the Shadows

Today, the Polk Museum of Art has an impressive and diverse collection of fine and decorative art. The permanent collection has nearly 2,500 objects ranging ancient to contemporary.

The Huntsville Museum of Art has achieved many milestones since its inception in 1970, but the acquisition of the Sellars Collection of art by American women represents a truly redefining moment.

Curator of Art, Adam Justice speaks with artist Michiko Fujii Fowler about her Exhibition Matter Makes Space.

Artist Michiko Fujii Fowler speaks at the opening reception for her exhibition Matter Makes Space

Russell Young would later explain his work as addressing the theme of “fame and shame.”

Curator of Art, Adam Justice interviews Mr. Alex Kasten, collector whose works are featured in the exhibition Destinations in Paintings