Orlando Museum of Art keeps the 250th Celebrations rolling with new USA 250 Exhibition
- Alastair Mac
- 38 minutes ago
- 3 min read
Now on view through October 4, USA 250 turns the nation's 250th anniversary into a summer-long road trip across more than a century of American art – drawn entirely from the museum's permanent collection.
The fireworks may be over, but the celebration is just getting started. The Orlando Museum of Art (OMA) invites visitors to keep marking America's Semiquincentennial – the 250th anniversary of the 1776 signing of the Declaration of Independence – with USA 250: 250 Years on the Road to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
While July 4 kicked off a year of national reflection, USA 250 gives Central Floridians months more to explore what 250 years of American life has looked like, through photography, painting, printmaking, collage, etching, and weaving that map the country's landscapes, labor, movements, and ideals.
Envisioned as a road trip across the United States, USA 250 trails significant historical points of view where artists have recognized, responded to, or documented changing human experiences. The earliest painting on view hails from the late 19th-century Hudson River School and is displayed alongside works across media, extending into the contemporary era.
Each wall in the exhibition corresponds to one of five geographical regions, beginning with the Southeast and moving counterclockwise through the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, the Midwest, the North and Northwest, and concluding with the Southwest. Visitors can take the wheel and choose their own route – from photographs of the National Parks and Depression-era landscapes to paintings of American labor and Pop Art prints commissioned for the 1976 Bicentennial.
The exhibition features works by some of the most recognized names in American art, including Fritz Scholder, Grant Wood, Ansel Adams, Thomas Moran, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Indiana, and Alfred Stieglitz, among others.
"In curating this exhibition, I wanted to share a breadth of experiences across the vast landscape that is the United States. Working with images and objects from our collection that recall the latter half of the 250 years since the American Revolution, a picture emerged of a nation that progressed through the Second Industrial Revolution and ushered in scientific, technological, social, urban, rural and environmental transformations,” said Katherine Page, associate curator at OMA. “Artists have been at the forefront of visualizing and recording those changes. As we honor the 250th anniversary of an ever-evolving country, I want visitors to dream and celebrate what the next 250 years of our future could hold."
Also on view is an extension of the museum’s Echoes of the Ancient in Contemporary Voices exhibition: Mateo Blanco’s Arhuaco Flag (2025), a naturally dyed, handwoven cotton flag created in collaboration with the Arhuaco Indigenous people of Colombia and courtesy of the artist. The American flag represents Blanco’s journey, commemorates the nation’s 250th anniversary, and reflects on the enduring spirit of a country built on freedom, resilience, and the belief that everyone’s story matters.
USA 250 is on view at OMA through October 4.
For more information about the Orlando Museum of Art and upcoming events, please visit www.omart.org.
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