LIVING HISTORY
2018/19 SeaSon Schedule
All dates subject to change. Please visit the Museum’s website for details, updates, and additional events.
L-R Marlene Rose (b.1967). Tulip Kimono, 2018. Sandcast Glass and Steel. Courtesy of the artist. A.E. Backus (1906-1990).
Everglades Island, c. 1970. Oil on canvas. Collection of the A.E. Backus Museum & Gallery, 2008.B2.OC.3. Dale Chihuly (b.1941).
Chartreuse Venetian, 1988. Hand Blown Glass. Courtesy of Art Link International. Clyde Butcher (b.1941). Crystal River, 1994.
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proclaimed in a message to Congress. “The Indian mode of
warfare, their dispersed condition, and the very smallness of
their number … render any further attempt to secure them by
force impracticable …”
THE SOLDIERS GO HOME
Soldiers soon abandoned lonely
outposts dotting the military maps,
including a ramshackle fortification
named Fort Pierce. Seminole
chiefs like Billy Bowlegs and Sam
Jones must have counted the mass
retreat as a win. But now the plan in
Washington was to send in random
colonists with guns.
By the end of 1842, pioneers were
filing permits to occupy 160-acre parcels
of land in the treacherous Indian
buffer, which included waterfront
properties up and down St. Lucie
Sound. St. Lucie Sound is what the
Indian River was called on Zachary
Taylor’s official military map back then — the portion that
stretches between the Sebastian and St. Lucie rivers.
Who would be desperate enough to move to swamplands
that were 200 miles away from the nearest place to purchase
provisions? In those days there were no usable roads down
the coast south of St. Augustine, and St. Augustine itself was
only a shabby outpost of progress. Jacksonville was growing,
OCTOBER 14 – NOVEMBER 16, 2018
Best of the Best Juried Exhibition
NOVEMBER 23 – DECEMBER 30, 2018
Masters of Glass: Dale Chihuly and Marlene Rose
DECEMBER 1-2, 2018
Holiday Sale Weekend + Casa del Rio Collection Trunk Show
JANUARY 11 – MARCH 3, 2019
Artists of Color: Place, Race, and
Vision of the Florida Highwaymen
JANUARY 27, 2019
Sunday in Key West Luncheon & Auction
FEBRUARY 15-17, 2019
Highwaymen Celebration Weekend
MARCH 3, 2019
23rd Annual “All You Should Eat” Backus Brunch
MARCH 9 – APRIL 28, 2019
Backus & Butcher and the Florida Landscape
MAY 10 – JUNE 21, 2019
Through the Eye of the Camera Juried Exhibition
Analog - Archival Silver Gelatin Print. Courtesy of the artist.
500 N. Indian River Drive | Historic Downtown Fort Pierce
772.465.0630 | www.BackusMuseum.com
>>
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
When Zachary Taylor was in charge of the Florida War, he commissioned a
military map of the peninsula.
Zachary Taylor etching from
1897 Messages and Papers
of the Presidents.
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