This Fall, the Polk Museum of Art at Florida Southern College presents audiences with an incomparable peek not merely into the incredible story of Impressionism’s rise in the United States but also into the influential world of private collecting.

The exhibition delves deeply into the art, history, and culture of the Netherlands in the 17th century, a period of great wealth and cultural achievement for the Dutch people. In what was then already called a Golden Age, the Netherlands was a world power whose military fleet was growing and where trade, science, and the arts flourished as never before.

This exclusive exhibition features works selected from the private collection of the SC Johnson Company, most of which have never before traveled outside The Council House, the company’s international conference center in Racine, Wisconsin. Featuring works in all media and crossing all stylistic and geographic boundaries, this Polk Museum original exhibition offers audiences a deep dive into rarely seen art from one of the most consequential decades in art history.

We all know a Picasso when we see one. We can recognize a Pollock drip painting from far across a gallery. We know a Vermeer from a mile away. But what about the spaces in which these works were produced? Have you ever wondered where the magic happens?  Where art history is literally made?

Sun + Light is a collection of works from the series Everyone Loves the Sunshine by contemporary visual artist Charles Edward Williams. The art in the Sun + Light juxtaposes Williams’ own personal encounters, past and present, with the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

Painted Pages: Illuminated Manuscripts 13th to 18th Centuries features more than thirty works from medieval Bibles, prayer books, psalters, books of hours, choir books, missals, breviaries, and lectionaries as well as a selection of rare Hebrew and Arabic manuscripts.

Edgar Degas is one of the most familiar “name” artists in the entire history of art — and, this winter, the Polk Museum is excited to bring Degas to Lakeland in a wide-ranging exhibition of privately-owned works entitled Edgar Degas: The Private Impressionist.