ART
NIFTY FIFTY
From its modest start as an outdoor venue,
the A.E. Backus Gallery & Museum marks
its 50th season this year
From humble beginnings as an exhibition space for local artists, the A.E. Backus Gallery and Museum now attracts more than 28,000 visitors a year to see
works by local, regional and nationally recognized artists in all media.
BY CATHERINE ENNS GRIGAS
PHOTOS BY ED DRONDOSKI
It is hard to believe that what began as an open-air art
30
gallery, has operated without grant money and has never
charged even a modest admission fee has survived,
and even thrived, for almost half a century, but the A.E.
“Bean” Backus Gallery & Museum in Fort Pierce can
make that claim.
Call it the little gallery that could.
Its early days were humble. Artists hung their paintings
both inside and outside the gallery under a covered portico
and scrambled to remove them when a rainstorm threatened.
During the late 1960s, board members made a point of stopping
their Monday night meetings in time to watch “Laugh
In” on television. A copy of the Venus de Milo, given to the
museum by a local art enthusiast, was proudly displayed in
the garden courtyard.
But the place that is affectionately called “the gallery” has
also made its mark as a regional museum with an important
past that figures prominently in Florida’s artistic tradition. It
is where many of the artists of the Indian River School first
exhibited their works and it continues to be the central showplace
for artists who paint the back country, river and ocean
>>