FLORIDIANA: Vintage Treasures & Oddities from the Sunshine State

Florida has long been a place of escape, and the souvenirs visitors took home during its mid-century heyday—hotel ashtrays, rubber alligators, roadside attraction brochures—embodied memories of carefree days in the Sunshine State. These vernacular objects, often decorative, utilitarian, or absurd, offer an unfiltered glimpse into a time when Florida’s identity was shaped by tourism and fantasy. Built on leisure and adventure, the state's countless tourist attractions—Fountains of Youth, glass-bottom boat tours, and animal theme parks—stretched reality to the edge of imagination. Each place generated its own keepsakes: lamps made from coconut shells in Tampa, alligator-handle canes in St. Augustine, and hand-painted brooches of the St. Johns River. From matchbooks bearing bright graphic imagery to Parrot Jungle makeup compacts and Monkey Jungle curios, these objects blur the line between the kitschy and the nostalgic. Posters, photographs, and hand-tinted images further fueled fantasies of untamed wilderness and tropical paradise. Florida’s visual culture is based on its position as a cultural crossroads and gateway to the Caribbean. The objects in the exhibition— whether mass-produced or handmade—anchor the surreal identity of a state that is less a place than a dreamscape—part reality, part illusion. The exhibition will draw from the local collection of expert Gary Monroe (Photographer and Curator and contain about 50 objects.