A&H - Art & History Museums Maitland

A Return to Espero
2025-07-26 11:00 - 2025-10-05 16:00 (America/New_York) | Art & History Museums – Maitland, 231 W. Packwood Ave, Maitland, FL, 32751, United States
Join us for the opening reception on July 25, 2025 from 6:30-9pm: Meet the curator, enjoy live music by Shine, food truck, and a cash bar all just 15 minutes from downtown Orlando on our beautiful National Historic Landmark campus. Thank you to Red Bud Landscaping for sponsoring this exhibition opening! GET YOUR FREE TICKETS HERE >>

About the Exhibition
For nearly a century, the story of the Maitland Art Center’s founding seemed complete.
Then, the letters surfaced.
Recently discovered in the archives of the Curtis Institute of Music, an extraordinary trove of correspondence between artist J. André Smith and philanthropist Mary Curtis Bok reveals a deeper, more compelling origin, born of a powerful creative alliance and a shared vision for what Central Florida’s art community could become. Illustrated by Smith and brimming with artistic and philosophical exchange, these letters illuminate the origin of the Research Studio as never before. Paired with rarely seen works from Smith’s evolving career, A Return to Espero reframes the birth of the site as a profound creative partnership.
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This exhibition is generously supported by a grant from the Elizabeth Morse Genius Foundation

Pangarap: Espero Reimagined
2025-10-18 11:00 - 2026-01-04 16:00
Pangarap: Espero Reimagined transforms The Maitland Art Center gallery into a canvas of speculative storytelling under Filipino artist Isobel Francisco’s guidance. Drawing inspiration from Jules André Smith’s pivotal decision to establish an artist colony in Florida, Francisco envisions an alternate reality where Smith’s path leads instead to 1937 Philippines. Through a collection of fictional artifacts, iconographies, and artworks, the exhibition invites viewers to ponder the intriguing parallels and contrasts between this imagined scenario and the museum’s own rich history. Pangarap, which means dream or vision in Filipino, will offer a compelling alternate reality, inviting audiences to ponder the impact of one artist’s decision on the cultural landscape of 1937 Philippines and beyond. Plan your visit >>
Click here to see photos of the opening reception>>
This exhibition is generously supported by a grant from the Elizabeth Morse Genius Foundation

The Situated Body: Reconfiguring the Symbolic
2026-01-24 11:00 - 2026-04-05 16:00
About the Exhibition
From soot on paper to felt, The Situated Body, an exhibition of the work of Mexican sculptor Jacobo Alonso, redefines the classical depictions of the human form through contemporary materials. Alonso transforms traditional drawing and sculptural practices into expressive and tactile abstractions, all referencing the configuration and movement of the human form. Inspired by both pre-Columbian traditions and the Art Center’s Mayan Revival architecture, his work, some created during his 2025 residency at A&H, challenges assumptions about form, identity, and materiality.
Alonso stated, “Each body possesses its own geography and undergoes numerous inevitable mutations that reveal the genealogy of its image and form. It is a territory inherent to the individual, tracing the constellation of their identity yet always appealing to an inherent instability”.
This exhibition is the first time that Alonso’s “fumage” works of soot on paper will be shown alongside his vibrant sculptural works of reconfigured felt.
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All 2025-26 free programs at A&H are supported by a grant from Duke Energy Foundation.

a loom, a fence, a wire, a thread
2026-04-25 11:00 - 2026-07-05 16:00
About the Exhibition
Mär Martinez, a Syrian American artist and Fulbright scholar, presents new work developed during her 2024–25 Fulbright research in Istanbul. Her project investigates traditional Turkish and Middle Eastern textile techniques while reflecting on themes of urbanization, surveillance, and cultural memory. Drawing from nighttime walks through Istanbul’s neighborhoods, Martinez transforms architectural barriers, barbed wire, fences, and centuries old textile patterns, into motifs of both resistance and resilience. Her haunting paintings explore personal heritage, global textile history, and contemporary social commentary in poetic, layered form.
The initial threads of this, her first solo museum exhibition, created in Istanbul and New York, began at the Art & History Museums of Maitland during her 2021–2023 Studio Artist Residency. This exhibition represents both a new artistic departure and an expanded exploration of the themes she began contemplating during her residency.
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US
2026-07-25 11:00 - 2026-09-27 16:00
Join us for the opening reception on Friday, July 24 from 6:30-9pm: Meet the curator, enjoy live music, food truck, and a cash bar all just 15 minutes from downtown Orlando on our beautiful National Historic Landmark campus.
Free Tickets Here

About the Exhibition
“Ours is the wide-open mind with gusts of ideas blowing through it and demanding manifestation.”
Drawing inspiration from Jules André Smith’s 1939 essay, “An Insanitorium of Art,” US embraces Smith’s vision of an artistic practice rooted in inquiry and intellectual openness, and examines how generations of artists have engaged with the Art Center as a site for creative exploration.
The exhibition brings together works by six Bok Fellows from the 1930s and 40s, artists who spent their winters working at the Center, alongside selections by Smith himself. Named in honor of Mary Curtis Bok, whose support was instrumental to the establishment of the Art Center, these historical artists’ works are presented in dialogue with works by nine of our contemporary resident artists, the intellectual and artistic heirs of Smith’s Bok Fellows program.
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Vilomah: Against the Natural Order
2026-10-17 11:00 - 2027-01-03 16:00
Join us for the opening reception on Friday, October 16 from 6:30-9pm: Meet the curator, enjoy live music, food truck, and a cash bar all just 15 minutes from downtown Orlando on our beautiful National Historic Landmark campus.

About the Exhibition
Soude Dadras is an artist, curator, and educator currently living and working in Atlanta, Georgia. She was born in Iran and graduated from Islamic Azad University with a bachelor’s degree in Persian Rugs. Dadras was awarded her MFA from the Welch School of Art & Design at Georgia State University in Atlanta. In her solo exhibition, Vilomah: Against the Natural Order, Dadras investigates the traumatic sociocultural experiences she encountered firsthand in Iran, as well the processes and rituals of healing which enabled her to turn her pain into positivity. This unique installation of traditional handwork, found objects, video, abandoned textiles, and discarded data will seek to centralize disparate voices in this multidisciplinary exhibition.
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