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Entertainment
Highwaymen pull in
Several of the renowned artists will visit Inverness, where their show is drawing record crowds.
By JORGE SANCHEZ
Published April 8, 2005
INVERNESS - As the highly successful Highwaymen art exhibit enters its final month at the Old Courthouse Heritage Museum, two more visits by some of the fabled roadside artists of the 1950s and '60s are scheduled.
On Wednesday, Sylvester Wells will visit the museum to meet art collectors and on Thursday he will conduct art seminars at two schools.
His visit will be followed on April 16 by a larger contingent of Highwaymen artists including Mary Ann Carroll, James Gibson, Issac Knight, Robert Lewis Jr., Roy McLendon and Willie Reagan. They will bring paintings, available for purchase, not included in the present exhibit.
The Highwaymen art collection is by far the best-attended exhibit in the museum's five-year history.
According to Laurie Diestler, the museum's educational coordinator, attendance is about 30 percent higher than the previous most successful exhibit, the Traveling Exhibit from the Smithsonian in 2001.
"That's about 5,000 visitors, not counting school groups," Diestler said. "We're getting more responses from school groups this month, because they couldn't come earlier due to the missed days they had to make up from the hurricanes."
She said many area art collectors have come to the museum specifically to see the Highwaymen show. The Highwaymen were a group of African-American painters who painted colorful scenics. They were based along Florida's east-central coast during the 1950s and 1960s and sold the paintings from roadside stands or from the trunks of their cars.
Jorge Sanchez covers arts and entertainment in Citrus County. Call 860-7313 or e-mail sanchez@sptimes.com
If you go
The Old Courthouse Heritage Museum's Highwaymen exhibit will be up through April 27. Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday. Free admission and parking. Call 341-6436.
[Last modified April 8, 2005, 00:33:18]
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Fifty years ago, they were screwed-up kids sent to the Florida School for Boys to be straightened out. But now they are screwed-up men, scarred by the whippings they endured. Read the story and see a video and portrait gallery.
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