Florida Highwaymen at the Crossroads

The exhibition is the latest in the A.E. Backus Museum’s annual series celebrating and exploring the national phenomenon that got its start here. Florida Highwaymen at the Crossroads will be on view January 11 through March 2, 2025 at the Backus Museum located at 500 North Indian River Drive in Historic Downtown Fort Pierce. Opening Reception – Friday, January 17, 6:00-8:00 pm with remarks at 6:30; free for current members and $20 for not-yet members

The Highwaymen are a loose collective of Florida artists who learned landscape painting techniques and began a creative enterprise of selling their bold and rapidly-produced works of art to customers up and down the state’s Atlantic Coast and beyond from the trunks of cars. In 2004, twenty-six of the original artists were inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame, and in 2016 the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American Culture and History opened with 18 Highwaymen paintings in the national collection.