Roots, a new exhibition of work from the Gadsden Arts Center & Museum Permanent Collection, brings to the public remarkable works of art by leading artists from the Big Bend Region, many of which are on public view for the first time. North Florida is home to a great many visual artists, and promoting their work is a founding principle of the Gadsden Arts. The museum’s work to preserve leading artists’ work through the permanent collection preserves our cultural history for the public and future generations. Artists featured in the Roots exhibition include Dean Mitchell, Beth Appleton, William Thursby, and Joe McFadden.

Mitchell’s oil painting, “Laid Back” depicts a local man from Mitchell’s home town of Quincy, Florida who worked at Willie Ward’s Body Shop. The painting was featured in the “Black Romantic” exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2002, from which New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman dubbed Mitchell a “virtual modern-day Vermeer.” The painting was then purchased by a private collector in Hilton Head, SC who in 2018 gave the painting to the Gadsden Arts Center & Museum.

Beth Appleton’s “Back to the Garden” is a tribute to the special relationship Appleton has with Quincy and its residents, and was shown in the first exhibition in the Gadsden Arts Bell & Bates Building in 2000. A “Back to the Garden” Challenge was sent out to Gadsden Arts members asking them to contribute money to help buy the piece, a successful effort that made this the first piece acquired for the Permanent Collection.