The Hurston: A National Museum That Behaves Like a Neighbor
Opened in 1990 on East Kennedy Boulevard, the Zora Neale Hurston National Museum of Fine Arts shows artists of African descent from the U.S. and the diaspora — in the heart of the community that raised its namesake.
3 minute read
The smallest museum with the largest name in Florida sits on East Kennedy Boulevard in Eatonville: the Zora Neale Hurston National Museum of Fine Arts — The Hurston. It opened in 1990, the same year the first ZORA! Festival filled the street outside, and it has been doing the same job ever since: giving the art of the African diaspora a permanent home in the heart of the community that produced one of America’s essential writers.
A museum with a mission statement for an address
The Hurston exists, in its own founding language, to provide a place “in the heart of the community” where the public can view the work of artists of African descent, from the continent and across the diaspora. That phrase — in the heart of the community — is not decoration. The museum is presented by the Association to Preserve the Eatonville Community (P.E.C.), the preservation organization Eatonville residents founded in 1987 to stop a highway from being widened through the town, and it operates as both gallery and argument: this town is not a relic, it is a living culture with a contemporary art scene to prove it.
Exhibitions rotate quarterly, mixing emerging artists with established names — the museum has shown work by Faith Ringgold, Carrie Mae Weems and Lonnie Graham — and gallery talks bring artists, curators and scholars into the room. Alongside the art, the museum carries the Eatonville story itself: who founded this town in 1887, who Hurston was, and why a square mile of Orange County matters to American letters. For many visitors it is the first stop on the Hurston trail, and the docent conversation there will sharpen everything else you see on Kennedy Boulevard.
For a museum of its size, The Hurston’s reach is long. It has developed partnerships with the Orlando Museum of Art and with the Cornell Fine Arts Museum program at Rollins College in Winter Park, and its exhibition program has traveled — a Hurston retrospective was presented at Pennsylvania State University’s HUB-Robeson Galleries. That two-way traffic is the museum’s quiet thesis: art from this boulevard belongs in the national conversation, and the national conversation should have to come to Eatonville to have it. P.E.C., which also produces the ZORA! Festival, runs the museum as the year-round, walk-in version of the festival’s argument — that Eatonville’s culture is not a heritage exhibit but a going concern.
How a visit works
The Hurston keeps weekday hours and admission is free, with donations appreciated — check the museum’s site before you go, as hours shift around exhibitions and the festival. Give it an unhurried hour. The galleries are intimate rather than vast, which suits the work: this is a museum where you can stand close, read everything on the walls, and ask questions of people who know the town because it is theirs. In January the museum becomes a festival anchor — the ZORA! season’s opening exhibition traditionally debuts here during festival week, and in 2027 that opening falls on January 23, ahead of the Outdoor Festival of the Arts on the boulevard outside.
Pair it with the rest of the street: the Eatonville Branch Library two blocks west, the Moseley House on Taylor Avenue, and lunch on Kennedy Boulevard from our Kennedy Boulevard food guide. The museum also anchors the town end of a long curatorial friendship with the Art & History Museums in neighboring Maitland, which has co-presented companion exhibitions with The Hurston over the years — one more reason the Eatonville hub pairs naturally with a Maitland afternoon. Find it on the Orlando Top Spots Map, and go on a weekday morning when the light is good and the boulevard is quiet. Hurston, who believed her hometown needed no one’s permission to be a world, would have appreciated a national museum that behaves like a neighbor.
Photo: Ebyabe, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Orlando Citizen by email
The weekly edition, in your inbox
One email, every Saturday: the week’s edition of Orlando Citizen — the week’s stories, rankings and winners, gathered in one place. Free, and you can unsubscribe at any time.
Related Stories
Editor’s Picks
Spotted an error? Tell us — corrections · How we rank
