Alachua County Community Remembrance Project’s Community Quilts

Mary Ann Cofrin Exhibit Hall

Opens January 21, 2026

The Matheson will host the Alachua County Community Remembrance Project’s six Community Quilts in an exhibit that examines the role that injustice and violence had in our county’s history and the ways that our community moved towards reconciliation in the recent past. The quilts were made by Alachua County residents from various walks of life to commemorate those lives lost to racial violence in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The Steele Family

Main Exhibit Hall

Opens April 2026

The next main gallery exhibit will cover the lives of two ancestors in the Matheson family tree: Augustus and Augusta Steele.

Augustus, a Massachusetts native turned Florida land developer and Confederate government official, was the founder of the town of Cedar Key, Hillsborough County, and Levy County. His only child, Augusta, grew up on an island in the Cedar Keys and came of age during the Civil War.

Their life experiences, which range from 1792 to 1913, are documented almost exclusively within the Matheson family archive. This exhibit will utilize their unique collection to tell a story that begins during Florida’s Spanish dominion and ends as automobiles begin to cruise along the dirt roads of Alachua County.

Photos courtesy of the Matheson Family Collection

In the Pines: The Shadow of the Turpentine Industry

Mary Ann Cofrin Exhibit Hall

Opens Spring 2027

In partnership with the UF Museum Studies Program and the Alachua County Community Remembrance Project, this exhibit will examine the history of peonage labor during the Jim Crow Era as it pertains to the local turpentine industry.

Postcard courtesy of the Matheson collection