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This exhibit thoroughly explores the ways that swamp ingenuity was used to modify machines and motor vehicles to traverse and tame the Everglades. Both airboats and swamp buggies were spawned by mixing surplus airplane parts with boats, cars, trucks, and tractors. The history of these hybrids and mechanical Frankenstein creations will be told vintage photos as well as actual vehicles and machinery included in the displays.
All Collier County Museum locations offer free admission.
They came for work. Laying rail, cutting timber, milling, and vegetable picking brought hard-working people south to the edge of Big Cypress. That there was work in Immokalee was known from Mississippi to Maryland. Teachers, preachers, and entrepreneurs followed. Not all would stay but eventually, a culturally rich, close-knit community grew. Cultivating Community explores this early history of Immokalee through the memories of its African American community members.
All Collier County Museum locations offer free admission.
When the Tamiami Trail opened to automobile traffic in April of 1928, it spanned over 100 miles of desolate sawgrass prairie and swampland. In order to protect tourists and other travelers crossing the Everglades by car, county founder Barron Collier established a small force of motorcycle police stationed at intervals across the length of Trail. The Southwest Mounted Patrol was not only the precursor to the Collier County Sheriff’s Department, but also predated the Florida Highway Patrol by more than 10 years. This exhibit, featuring a vintage 1929 Harley-Davidson JD as its centerpiece, celebrates Collier County’s ground-breaking contribution to law enforcement history and the role of the motorcycle in taming Florida’s last frontier.
All Collier County Museum locations offer free admission.
Aliento a Tequila (or The Spirit of Tequila) exhibition explores and celebrates the landscape, culture, and traditions that gave birth to tequila, Mexico’s mestizo national drink. This series of photographs by Joel Salcido includes the original distilleries that literally founded the industry, as well as several artisanal tequileras committed to the ancestral ways of tequila-making, from harvest to bottle. The exhibition was curated by Roy L. Flukinger, Independent Curator Emeritus and Past Senior Curator of Photography of the Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin. The tour is organized by ExhibitsUSA, part of Mid-America Arts Alliance. This exhibit is being presented as part of Collier County’s ¡Arte Viva! Festival.
All Collier County Museum locations offer free admission.
Part of Collier County’s ¡Arte Viva! celebration, this exhibition will feature twenty–six photographic works by Clyde Butcher, a world-renowned photographer based in Ochopee, FL.
Commissioned by the United Nations to create a portfolio of the mountainous lands of Cuba, Clyde Butcher set out on three week-long expeditions into unfamiliar lands. He explored the island country’s varied geographic regions, from the Sierra Maestra Mountains in Cuba’s eastern Granma province, to the southern coast between Manzananilo and Santiago de Cuba.
All Collier County Museum locations offer free admission.