Current Exhibits

Opening Soon:

Lost Labels: Art, Advertising, & Agriculture

October 13th – December 31st

Immokalee Pioneer Museum at Roberts Ranch

Designed to attract the eye of northern fruit brokers in dimly lit rail stations, the use of these colorful labels lasted from the early 1900s until the shortages of World War II forced the industry to switch to cardboard boxes with pre-printed labels. Despite nearly forty years of use, the whimsical labels adhered to these crates have become highly sought and collectible. Lost Labels explores not only the subject matter, but the practical function of the labels. For instance, background color could represent the overall quality of the citrus. Additionally, the demeanor of some of the people featured in the labels could serve as a commentary on the harvest itself.

While Lost Labels presents citrus labels from around the state, the Immokalee Pioneer Museum staff have expanded the exhibit to include information and artifacts that represent Immokalee and Deep Lake’s citrus production. The citrus industry within these Collier County locations thrived during the Florida citrus boom that occurred between World War I and World War II. Part art exhibit, part history exhibit, Lost Labels will contain something for every viewer to love!

All Collier County museum locations offer free admission.

Trading Posts of South Florida

September 1 – November 28, 2020

Museum of the Everglades

Before there was a road connecting Florida’s coasts and even before the railroads had made their way to some of the larger towns on the frontier, trading posts and general stores throughout South Florida were doing a brisk business in pelts, plumes, and hides supplied by indigenous hunters and pioneer settlers. These local commodities in turn fed the fashion trends in major cities like feathered ladies’ hats and alligator skin shoes and luggage. As populations grew and the landscape changed, so did the ways goods were bought and sold.

Trading Posts of South Florida focuses on locations in Collier County (the Storter General Store in Everglades City, the McKinney and Smallwood Stores in Chokoloskee, Brown’s Landing in Immokalee and the W.D. Collier store on Marco Island), but the exhibit also explores other stores further afield that were equally important to regional trade during the early days of statehood. Starting out as the designations for trading posts, names like Stranahan, Brickell, Burdine and Raulerson remain a part of the lexicon of South Florida place names and businesses today.

All Collier County museum locations offer free admission.

Never No More: Storter’s Southwest Florida

September 15 – December 5, 2020

Marco Island Historical Museum

Never No More features original drawings, paintings and sculptures by fisherman and folk artist Robert Lee Storter. Born in 1894 in Everglade (now Everglades City), he died in 1987 in Naples. His grandparents were some of the earliest settlers of the area, and the Storters were responsible for a many local firsts. His uncle, George Storter, founded the first general store and post office in Everglades City. His father was Robert Bembery Storter.

Robert Lee Storter was primarily known for his skill as a fisherman and guide in Southwest Florida. However, he was always creating art and documenting his world as he saw it. He was a self-taught artist with a focus on his daily life: fishing, wildlife and the areas in and around Naples, Marco Island and Everglades City. His lifetime spanned an era of incredible change in Southwest Florida from a frontier land to millionaire’s playground. His artwork documents these monumental changes, especially focusing on their effects on the land and wildlife.

All Collier County museum locations offer free admission.

Tara O’Neill: Bodies in Motion

September 3 – November 21, 2020

Naples Depot Museum

The Naples Depot Museum is pleased to present Bodies in Motion, by Tara O’Neill.  Throughout Tara’s artistic life she has endeavored to capture singularly perfect moments, to reveal the extraordinary within the ordinary, and offer them as an antidote to the sensory overload that permeates modernity. Between the rising and setting of our sun, shadows shift over sand and sea, flora and fauna; beach buckets fill and empty, twilight whispers, dawn peeps. No two days can ever be the same.

Through this collection, Bodies in Motion, she offers a celebration of our shared humanity: a gesture so tender and common as toweling one’s hair dry; the escaped delight of children at play; hands sailing elsewhere inside the rhythm of music; the ultimate exultation of defying gravity. We are extraordinary even at our most ordinary.

All Collier County museum locations offer free admission.