Art of the Treasure Coast

Visual Feast

Compelling season being cooked up by local museums

Museums along the Treasure Coast are getting ready for an exciting season that is sure to please a wide variety of art lovers.

 

Love’s Labour Lost, at the Vero Beach Museum of ArtEgyptian Delights

Ancient Egypt remained a mystery to most of Western Europe for centuries. While the magical civilization with its pyramids, temples, pharaohs and hieroglyphics had fascinated the world since the Greek and Roman periods, it wasn’t until Napoleon’s occupation of Egypt from 1798 to 1801 that the wonders of that culture were documented, ultimately drawing attention to that country and to the Orient in general...

Live acts all over

Graceful dancers, favorite songs, outdoor concerts, plays in all flavors, ballet and opera are awaiting lovers of live performance this season. 

Back in full force after the pandemic, theaters are booking one act after another. The first of the season’s plays and musicals are underway, and tickets are available now for a variety of rock and classic concerts featuring original and tribute artists. Ballet and opera are coming in 2024 to the Vero Beach High School Performing Arts Center...

Visual Virtuosity

This Treasure Coast art season is packed with thrilling exhibitions. Art enthusiasts interested in Modern art will be captivated by shows featuring M.C. Escher at the Vero Beach Museum of Art as well as science fiction illustrations at the A.E. Backus Museum...

THE FINE ART OF FRIENDSHIP

The friendship of two of the Treasure Coast’s most notable historic personalities, A.E. “Bean” Backus and Willard Monroe “Kip” Kiplinger, is being celebrated in an exhibit titled Kindred Spirits: Paintings and Letters from the Kiplinger Family Collection. The exhibition runs from Nov. 17 through Jan. 7, 2024 at the A.E. Backus Museum and Gallery in Fort Pierce...

Kevin Hutchinson

Stuart artist combines inherited talent with love of boats

It must have been in his genes. Kevin Hutchinson, a renowned Stuart artist, was born into the first family of Treasure Coast artists. His father, James Hutchinson, who recently died, was inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame, in part for his unforgettable paintings of Seminole Indians. His uncle was Beanie Backus, the famous landscape artist whose museum is a popular attraction in Fort Pierce. Hutchinson’s mother, Joan, was a portrait artist, too.

Love story

The creation of the Highwaymen Museum, which is opening in Fort Pierce in February, didn’t happen overnight. It started about 63 years ago when Doretha met Alfred Hair at Coley’s Drive-in on 25th Street in Fort Pierce. 

It was 1959, and 16-year-old Doretha had just moved from West Virginia to Fort Pierce with her siblings to live with their older sister after their mother had died. As she was a high school graduate, Doretha worked as a waitress at a segregated bus station on U.S. 1 and Avenue D to help support her siblings...

 

Vero Beach Theatre Guild

Staged transformation

The Vero Beach Theatre Guild is the oldest community theater on the Treasure Coast, offering extraordinary local entertainment since 1958. From its humble beginnings when plays were presented at the old naval base or high schools and props and costumes were kept in people’s garages to its current state-of-the-art campus, the guild was built on the generosity of a community with a thirst for live theatre...

 

The Sunrise Theatre marks the beginning of its 100th year with the graceful Swan Lake ballet on Dec. 28 performed by the State Ballet Theatre of Ukraine

Momentous milestones

If there is ever a time for a theater to shine, it’s during a major anniversary year. Eight anniversaries marking decades or half decades this year foretell a brilliant season for the Treasure Coast performing arts. Expect curtains to rise on some of the best shows now that the worst of the pandemic years seem behind us. 

Years of hard work and sometimes digging, hammering and sawing by theater founders created today’s robust performing arts scene on the Treasure Coast.... 

 

CHRIS KLING

Artful lineup

From a private collection featuring European artists at the Vero Beach Museum of Art to a German Pop Art exhibition at the Elliott Museum, this Treasure Coast art season will captivate every visitor. And if paintings and drawings don’t spark your interest, the Backus Museum is having an exhibition on Walford Campbell’s ceramics. Also, car enthusiasts will enjoy the Vero Beach Museum of Art’s Streamlined Art Deco automobile show opening next year. 

 

A colorful mural

Reinventing Edgewood

After six long years in the planning and zoning stage, the Vero Beach Art Village is finally moving forward with transforming the historical downtown Edgewood neighborhood into a mixed-use residential and business village celebrating the arts.

The neighborhood is in the process of morphing into a place where visitors and the cultural community can meet, learn, entertain and interact in the appreciation of the visual, culinary and performing arts. It will be a creative place for artists to live, work and sell their creations...

 

The 39 Steps

Back on stage

“The show must go on,” the legendary band Queen sang after tragedy threatened its very existence. Treasure Coast theaters wouldn’t have it any other way either. Defying the grim face of a pandemic, where audiences were afraid to go out and performers were afraid to perform, they nimbly picked themselves up from an unprecedented season of cancellations and pivoted to turn the downtime into something that would bear fruit in the future. Their speedy response changed COVID-19 lemons into shiny golden gifts you’ll love this season.

1953 Cunningham

Elliott Museum at 60

Sixty years later, the Elliott Museum is still a cultural hub that focuses on local history, art, an extensive vintage car collection, baseball memorabilia and much more. In addition to its permanent collection, the Elliott displays a wide variety of changing exhibits during each season to keep visitors coming back.

The Elliott Museum’s exhibition, The Highwaymen

Museums feature local artists and special events

The 2021-2022 season will be chock full of interesting exhibits for museum–goers on the Treasure Coast. Both the Backus and Elliott are featuring paintings by the Florida Highwaymen while the Vero Beach Museum of Art has scheduled an historical display from the American Folk Art Museum, New York, and an exhibit of art on loan from local collectors. And, of course, all three are providing a safe environment as visitors return from a year of strict COVID guidelines.

A.E. Backus Museum and Gallery

Backus turns 60

From hurricanes to recessions, the A.E. Backus Museum and Gallery has weathered many storms in its 60-year history. But perhaps nothing has challenged its survival more than the pandemic.

As the oldest continually operating art institution on the Treasure Coast, the museum depends on community support and its popular events like the Backus Brunch for fundraising. That was all jeopardized when the museum, like everything else, closed to the public on March 16.

Humble beginnings

As a young photographer on his first big newspaper assignment, Jon Kral knew what he had to do to get the shot. He strapped himself to the outside of a Stearman Double crop duster plane while his subject skimmed over orange trees in a plume of chemicals.

That photograph of the colorful Fort Pierce crop duster Harold Williams sealed Kral’s fate. From then on, the camera would always be with him and he would always go the extra mile to get the shot he wanted.

Mirroring an illusion

When Vero Beach Museum of Art’s new senior curator, Anke Van Wagenberg, lined up one of her favorite artists for an exhibition this fall, she had no idea that a pandemic would shutter the museum and change much of the way it operates.

But as it turns out, the work of the internationally-acclaimed South Korean-born Baltimore resident Chul Hyun Ahn could not have been a better choice for a world restricted and changed by a pandemic.

His sculptures created with light and mirrors and other objects offer a window into the infinite.

Safety first

The performing arts season comes roaring back with the beginning of the new year after many 2020 shows were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Full CDC safety requirements will be met by all theaters, including deep cleaning and sanitizing, masks, hand sanitizer, social distancing and more. Each theater’s website will provide details.

2021 promises to be a very busy year for show- and concert-goers with a jam-packed schedule that includes some of the postponed events.

Artist Kathleen Carbonara’s portrait

Real life

Kathleen Carbonara says she knew since kindergarten that she wanted to be an artist. One look at the “pink carnation” in the Crayola box and she was smitten.

“It looked so good to me, I ate it,” she recalls.

But it wasn’t until decades later that she began painting, making a successful career as a portrait artist with works in more than 40 private collections, including the University of Notre Dame, along with pursuing a number of other subjects and themes, such as still lifes, that interest her.

Alfred Hair

Alfred Hair

It has been nearly 50 years since a young black man was shot and later died on a hot August night in a modest little bar on Avenue D in Fort Pierce. He might have been forgotten, except that he left a curious legacy that was to live on long after his death.

Alfred Hair was an artist, and his paintings of turquoise seas, peach clouds and scarlet royal poinciana trees, along with the thousands more created by his friends, family, neighbors and acquaintances, became the signature works of the 26 African-American artists who were later called the Florida Highwaymen.

Mural by Jean Thomas

A vibrant and creative downtown

Main Street America programs throughout the country have painted their blighted downtown districts with murals, but few have elevated their artwork to the degree of the Eau Gallie Arts District. The provocative murals and sculptures have created a genuine outdoor art museum. More than 30 thought-provoking murals grace the sides of historic buildings housing eclectic shops, art galleries and restaurants. The revitalized arts district, quaintly nestled within the live oak-lined streets, has breathed new life into the authentic original neighborhood of Eau Gallie established in 1860.

An American in Paris

The Curtain Calls

Once again Treasure Coast theater-goers can expect a blockbuster season with shows that can transport them to a different place — one where the internet, the phone, the worries don’t intrude.

A Vero Beach performance of A Sinatra Valentine

The Beat Goes On

There is nothing like the sound of 50 to 100 professional musicians playing in perfect harmony. The melodic songs of the strings and the mystical tones of the woodwinds contrast with the resonant brass and powerful percussions, yet their movement and tempos stir emotions from deep within the soul. The Brevard Symphony Orchestra has been performing live symphonic music that leaves the audience breathless for more than 65 years.

2014 oil painting, Jacaranda Island

Icons & Mainstays

From one of the most interesting artists working on the international scene to beloved local artists who gained fame painting the area’s natural beauty to an interactive exhibit focused on the human body, Treasure Coast art museums promise something for everyone this upcoming season.

Memorable impressions

In the dozen or so years since Italian artist Ivo David settled in Vero Beach, his work has made its way into galleries, museums and private collections along the Treasure Coast. In 2009, David’s colorful interpretation of community festivities in downtown Vero Beach won the first fine art competition at the annual Hibiscus Festival. The vividly colored painting was recreated in posters and postcards and sold to benefit local charities.

Breaking the mold

Nashville sculptor Herb Williams has spent the last 15 years playing with crayons, but not in the way you would imagine. His sculptural medium is the iconic Crayola Crayon, that paper-wrapped stick of pigment and wax that is the first artistic tool of every child.

But instead of putting crayon to paper, he uses actual Crayola Crayons — thousands of them — to make eye-popping, three-dimensional sculptures of everything from a life-size Marilyn Monroe to forest creatures and fish. His internationally renowned works will be on display at the A.E. Backus Museum and Gallery for its premiere exhibition, Wax Menagerie, beginning March 17.

Edwin Binney

Crayola inventor had great impact on Treasure Coast

Besides inventing Crayola Crayons for generations of school children throughout the world, businessman and philanthropist Edwin Binney also left a huge imprint on the Treasure Coast by opening the Fort Pierce Inlet and creating the Port of Fort Pierce.

Born in Westchester County, N.Y., in 1866, Binney began working as a young man for Peekskill Chemical Works, a company his father Joseph founded in upstate New York in 1864. The company produced charcoal and lampblack, ground and packaged coal that could be used as a coloring pigment in inks and paints. Joseph moved the company headquarters to New York City in 1880 and was joined by Edwin and nephew C. Harold Smith.

Ascent of Atlantis painting

A brush with space

Years ago, when Vero Beach Museum of Art’s curator of collections and exhibitions, Jay Williams, held a similar position at the Museum of Arts and Sciences in Daytona Beach, he got wind of a nearby collection that piqued his space-generation curiosity.

Williams learned that a portion of the collection of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Art Program was housed at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. The complete NASA collection of about 2,000 pieces is spread out, with installations at several other venues, including the Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. and the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

A.E. Backus Museum and Gallery

Pictures of an expansion

It doesn’t want to be the hidden jewel of the Treasure Coast anymore.

When the doors open for the season on Nov. 12, the A.E. Backus Gallery and Museum will have a new look and an expanded exhibition space, part of its planned $1.1 million improvement. But that’s not all.

It also hopes to engage the entire community and be a more visible presence, to be a place not only to learn, but to spend time and return often.

Painter fulfills her destiny

For Taylor Loughlin, there’s no place like home. When the St. Lucie County artist returned to the area after earning her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Flagler College, Port St. Lucie is where she settled. She brought with her the school’s Art and Design Award for Painting.

Growing up in a family of creative people made the life of an artist the natural path for Loughlin to walk. Her father David has created pencil art as long as she can remember. His mother was an artist, working for a greeting card company. “She lived in New Jersey and … used to send me handmade greeting cards in the mail.” On her mother’s side, the women were great seamstresses and cooks and her brother, Jason, is a musician in Brooklyn.

Vero Beach Museum of Art

For the love of art

If a museum is a reflection of its community, the Vero Beach Museum of Art is a prime example of how much the area’s population treasures and supports the arts. In the 30 years since its doors first opened on Jan. 31, 1986, the museum has grown dramatically and has become the major force in the region’s cultural vibrancy.

Peter Yarrow

Peter Solo

No musical group embodied the spirit of 1960s activism more than Peter, Paul and Mary. Together, they performed over a half-century, compiling a song book that includes Lemon Tree, 500 Miles, Where Have All the Flowers Gone?, Blowin’ in the Wind, Puff the Magic Dragon, Leaving on a Jet Plane, I Dig Rock and Roll Music and Day Is Done. Though Mary Travers died in 2009, Peter Yarrow and Paul Stookey [known as Noel Paul] continue to perform, both as soloists and as a duo. Yarrow made a solo appearance at the Emerson Center in Vero Beach on Jan. 13.