page_title: The Highwaymen (artists)
section_title: Exhibits
hierarchical_section_title: The Highwaymen (artists) / Exhibits
caption_attribution_description: Fort Pierce, Florida: A. E. Backus Gallery &amp; Museum:
context_page_description: The Highwaymen, also referred to as the Florida Highwaymen, are a group of 26 African American landscape artists in Florida. Taught by Alfred “Beanie” Backus, they created a body of work of over 200,000 paintings, despite facing many racial and cultural barriers. Mostly from the Fort Pierce area, they painted landscapes and made a living selling them door-to-door to businesses and individuals throughout Florida from the mid-1950s through the 1980s. They also peddled their work from the trunks of their cars along the eastern coastal roads.
  For over 60 years The Highwaymen created large numbers of relatively inexpensive landscape paintings using construction materials rather than traditional art supplies. As no galleries would accept their work, they sold them in towns and cities and along roadsides throughout Florida, often still wet, out of the trunks of their cars. Their success and longevity is remarkable considering they began their career in the racially unsettled and violent times of the 50s in Florida and amid the social conditions of the Jim Crow South where the stirrings of the civil rights movement were only just beginning.
context_section_description: The Museum of Florida History in Tallahassee has paintings by twenty-three of the original twenty-six artists.
  In February 2016, an exhibition in Ottawa, Canada was sponsored by the United States Embassy for US Black History month. The exhibit at the SAW Gallery included 30 paintings by all members of the Florida Highwaymen and a documentary.
  In 2017, an exhibit titled “The Florida Highwaymen: Art Innovators in a Civil Rights Epoch” was held at Homer & Dolly Hand Art Center at Stetson University in Daytona Beach.
  Venues for other exhibits have included the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (Washington D.C.), Orange County Regional History Center (Orlando, Florida), The Florida House (Washington, D.C.), and The Florida Aquarium (Tampa, Florida).
caption: A. E. Backus Gallery & Museum houses artwork by A. E. Backus, and other Florida artists such as "The Highwaymen"
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