Image: Winslow Homer, "Foul Hooked Black Bass," 1904, Watercolor on paper, The Florida Art Collection, Gift of Samuel H. and Roberta T. Vickers, 2020.18.114
The Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida in Gainesville is preparing to open a new 3,600-square-foot gallery and has chosen a collection gift as the subject of its first exhibition. 'Beyond the Brush: The Florida Art Collection, Gift of Samuel H. and Roberta T. Vickers' is scheduled to open on 27 October 2026, a date the museum describes as tentative and dependent on the completion of the gallery project, and is planned to remain on view until 8 October 2028.
The works come from the collection that Sam and Robbie Vickers gave to the Harn in 2020, a donation the museum calls transformative. The gift was first presented in 2021 in the inaugural exhibition 'A Florida Legacy'. According to the museum, many of the works in the new presentation will be on view at the Harn for the first time, while others have not been shown since that 2021 exhibition.
The selection brings together more than 70 paintings, works on paper and sculptures by nearly 60 artists, spanning the mid-19th to the mid-20th century. Its subject is Florida as a source of inspiration for artists, residents and visitors alike. Rather than presenting the works simply as views of landmarks, cities, beaches and the state's vegetation, the exhibition sets out to examine the stories and motivations behind them, and the layered histories and points of view of both the artists and the places and people they depicted.
The checklist includes nationally recognised figures in American art such as Martin Johnson Heade, Winslow Homer, Thomas Moran, Louis Comfort Tiffany, John Singer Sargent, Herman Herzog, Jane Peterson, Marguerite Zorach, Ernest Lawson, William Glackens and Doris Lee. Alongside them are pioneering regional artists who worked in Florida, among them Laura Woodward, Albert Backus and Anthony Thieme, as well as the Highwaymen painters Johnny Daniels and Harold Newton.
