Orlando, get ready for a road trip you can take on foot. USA 250: 250 Years on the Road to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness is now on view at the Orlando Museum of Art through November 8, 2026, filling two galleries — the Martha Deneen Cotten Gallery and the J. Hyde Crawford and Anthony Tortora Gallery — with works drawn entirely from the museum’s own collection.
Curated by Associate Curator Katherine Page, the exhibition is designed as a journey across the United States. Each wall follows one of five regions, moving counterclockwise from the Southeast through the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, the Midwest, the North and Northwest, and finally the Southwest. Along the way you will find photographs of National Parks, landscapes shaped by migration and the Great Depression, paintings honoring everyday laborers, collages that evoke a beloved sense of place, historic etchings made before photography was everywhere, and joyful Pop Art prints commissioned for the 1976 Bicentennial.
The journey spans more than a century of creativity, from a late 19th-century Hudson River School painting to contemporary works, including Mateo Blanco’s Arhuaco Flag (2025), a naturally dyed, hand-woven cotton flag created with the Arhuaco Indigenous people of Colombia. It is a warm, thoughtful way to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary — and with closing day coming soon, now is the perfect time to go.
Photo: Orlando Museum of Art
