This fall, the Addison Gallery presents the vibrant and expressive work of the Florida Highwaymen painters as well as photographs and installations by Tommy Kha, the second recipient of the Addison’s Hayes Prize.
Also on view will be three exhibitions highlighting different aspects the Addison’s own collection. Comprised of works of various time periods, artists, and subject matter, these exhibitions explore the American experience—past, present, and future.
Making Their Way: The Florida Highwaymen Painters (through January 4, 2025) showcases the work of the Florida Highwaymen, a loosely affiliated group of 26 African American landscape painters who sold their vivid and expressive tropical scenes door-to-door and out of the trunks of their cars along the coastal roads of Eastern Florida from the 1950s through the 1980s.
Hayes Prize 2025: Tommy Kha, Other Things Uttered (through January 25, 2026) presents work by Tommy Kha, the second recipient of the Addison’s Bartlett H. Hayes, Jr. Prize. Kha examines how we construct belonging and otherness through photography, inventing new models for self-portraiture with a critical eye toward the medium’s long history of absences and erasure.
Captive Lands (through January 18, 2026) is organized in dialogue with Making Their Way: The Florida Highwaymen Painters and consists of works drawn from the Addison’s permanent collection. This exhibition unfolds over five distinct sections, exploring the myriad ways in which the American landscape has been romanticized, exploited, celebrated, commercialized, and conquered.
Family Portrait (through January 4, 2026) brings together photographs from the Addison’s collection, revealing how artists have engaged the theme of family over a span of nearly two centuries. Depicting grief and joy, solemnity and humor, intimate tenderness and boisterous energy, these works demonstrate photography’s capacity to capture both the particular and the universal aspects of family experience.
Playing to Our Strengths: Highlights from the Permanent Collection (through July 31, 2026) explores American art in two sections: the “ideal,” bringing together American Impressionist paintings with Pictorialist photography, and the “real,” featuring works by the Ashcan School and social realist photographs. Together, these works reveal how American artists of the era grappled with questions of beauty, truth, and the rapidly transforming character of modern life.
