The Curatorial View: Our Orlando, Q + A with Mennello Museum of American Art, Executive Director, Shannon Fitzgerald
Shannon Fitzgerald
Executive Director, Mennello Museum of American Art
Image courtesy of Tamara Knight Photography
Installation View: Our Orlando: Tasanee Durrett, Martha Jo Mahoney & Mado Smith, Mennello Museum of American Art
Image Courtesy of Jim Hobart, Macbeth Studio
In the fourth iteration of Our Orlando, three distinct artists explore landscapes of history, identity, the natural world, and memory and its transformations. All three artists, Tasanee Durrett, Martha Jo Mahoney, and Mado Smith, all come to evoke a core concept of the Mennello Museum in recognizing artists' and their identities to the ever-growing narrative of Orlando art and artists. This community is built on the diversity and differences our artists showcase. Alongside them comes the significance of their impact in our contemporary today, and what they will bring in their future works. In this interview with Mennello Museum’s Executive Director, Shannon Fitzgerald, we examine this year’s gathering of artists alongside the exhibition series’ history and resonance within the Orlando art community and beyond.
Exhibition on view: May 15th to August 16th, 2026.
Mennello Museum of American Art and its exhibitions are generously supported by the City of Orlando and Friends of the Mennello Museum of American Art. Orange County Government provides additional funding through the Arts & Cultural Affairs Program and United Arts of Central Florida.
Our Orlando: Tasanee Durrett, Martha Jo Mahoney & Mado Smith is curated by Shannon Fitzgerald with curatorial support by Flynn Dobbs for Mado Smith.
Installation View: Our Orlando: Tasanee Durrett, Martha Jo Mahoney & Mado Smith, Mennello Museum of American Art
Image Courtesy of Jim Hobart, Macbeth Studio
"It is a curated exhibition, grounded in our observations and work in the field, that identifies artists participating in the broader contemporary art dialogue and discourse, helping raise visibility, provide art-historical context for the artists, and, of course, provide support."
Shannon Fitzgerald, Executive Director, Mennello Museum of American Art
Installation View: Our Orlando: Martha Jo Mahoney, Mennello Museum of American Art
Images Courtesy of Jim Hobart, Macbeth Studio
MG: Tell us about the concept behind the ‘Our Orlando’ exhibition series and the unique contributions of this year’s exhibition and participating artists within the local and national context of American art.
SF: For the fourth iteration of Our Orlando exhibition, the museum presents excellence in art-making by three Orlando artists, each with distinctive practices, broad ranges of inspiration, and creative expression.
The exhibition is our fourth in a series I launched in 2017. Our first iteration celebrated local Orlando artists. At the time, the museum was not exhibiting them in the main exhibition program, so I wanted to address that. In the first year, I created it in response to the many ways emerging and local Orlando artists publicly responded to Pulse out in the community. They were shaping a visual fabric of kindness and generosity that resonated publicly. Their individual approaches ranged from formal, technical experimentation in calligraphy and comic arts to murals and digital art. All of the work was curated around their interests, not Pulse, and gathered to celebrate their creative work and generosity – they gave Orlando a huge hug at a difficult time, thereby shaping Orlando's landscape. It included artists who may not necessarily exhibit in museums, but who illustrate for a weekly newspaper, design comics, work on websites, or create public murals. The first exhibition included new work by Karina Constantine, Hillery Powers, Chris Tobar Rodrigues, Andrew Spear, and Rhett Withey.
The second iteration in 2018 brought significant exposure to the visual artists Sarah M. Bender, Peterson Guerrier, Boy Kong, and Kelly Joy Ladd, all of whom have established themselves as prominent Orlando artists making an impact in our creative community and beyond. Our third, "Our Orlando, " was in 2021 and featured diverse emerging artists, including Don Rimx and the art collective Lemon Press, with the theme "Construct: Our Orlando."
In curating the fourth in the series, I wanted to consider three very different artists ... who I thought were making exciting, excellent work through highly focused practices, without an overarching theme or connective thread other than making work that called for deeper contemplation and sharing with our community.
This is important to the Mennello Museum because we elevate artists within a professional, national museum context. It is a curated exhibition, grounded in our observations and work in the field, that identifies artists participating in the broader contemporary art dialogue and discourse, helping raise visibility, provide art-historical context for the artists, and, of course, provide support. This is much better achieved through curatorial practice than through juried exhibitions or public calls. We select artists at critical moments in their creative trajectory, and our exhibition is often their first museum consideration. This is significant because it is included in a museum that exhibits renowned artists and contributors to American Art History and Culture across centuries and genres: from Audubon to Warhol, from Impressionism to mid-Century to the present, from the Met to the Smithsonian to Crystal Bridges. We present compelling and resonant work, often for the first time in Central Florida, and Orlando artists are part of that narrative.
In four exhibitions, we have presented 15 artists in Orlando with their first museum exhibitions and garnered context and visibility that contributed to their careers. We have a terrific 'what are they doing now' story behind this exhibition.
Installation View: Our Orlando: Tasanee Durrett, Mennello Museum of American Art
Images Courtesy of Jim Hobart, Macbeth Studio
MG: What was the curatorial focus in selecting this year’s artists: Durrett, Mahoney, and Smith?
SF: I was interested in Tasanee Durrett’s work exploring the African diaspora through illustration and materials, and in engaging ways through figuration and narration. I have worked with artists across the African diaspora for a long time, and she is developing a language for herself that is both personal, rooted in past exploration and urgent sensibilities, and an understanding of herself. She is working with line - the clarity of black and white- while also pushing color and patterning with exaggeration and perspective that is both stressful and joyful. I have observed enormous growth in her work over the last two years, and her experimentation is exciting to observe.
What is unique about this exhibition is that it is not about 'emerging' artists, as previous ones were, but about where an artist is doing exciting things.
Martha Jo Mahoney has been creating abstract paintings for decades and has prominent collections throughout the region. With a powerful use of brush and color, her abstractions are rooted in nature, observation, and the Florida landscape and light. By referencing emotion non-objectively, Mahoney creates emotionally charged works with subtle references and identifiers. Often capturing a fleeting moment in culture, society, or personally, Mahoney expresses emotion and the transitory through gesture, line, and color. Recognized for her washes in oil painting, she creates atmospheric images, transitions, or reflections made still on the canvas or activated in abstraction.
Mado Smith has expanded his work, focusing on his studies of the human figure in harmony with nature. From mural work to small, intimate paintings, he creates new, striking, and positive juxtapositions where both the human figure and their environment are honored, illuminated, and slightly exaggerated for emphasis. Looking back at his work from a year ago, in which his figures were stewards of the land and its inhabitants, painted close to plants and wild animals, he pushes this focus further through his color palette and brushwork, creating watery abundance and micro-macro perspectives to highlight what matters.
Tasanee has earned visibility for her work in the Parramore Neighborhood, where she combines painting and murals with text and activism, particularly around access to food, health, and equity. She has created generous images in the neighborhood about food, feminine power, and positivity - a power for all. She is trained as an architect in Chicago, and a sense of place is important. A perspective on a very human level matters, and I think viewers respond.
Mado, like Tasanee, was also an artist who participated in Bloomberg Philanthropies' Public Art Challenge, with an interest in farming from soil to table and in all those who labor along the way to the fruits, beauty, and aesthetics of food, all with a bright palette and approachable characters. He is an artist to watch, as I think we will see more of his work as he expands his practice and exposure.
Martha has long been a leader in the arts in Orlando, sharing studio space with some of Orlando's foremost artists (Jackie Otto Miller, Chris Robb, Nancy Jay, and Rima Macksoud) in an Ivanhoe building, and now maintains her studio practice at the downtown McRae Art Studios. She is part of a broad painterly discourse in Orlando, and her work from the last two years is vibrant, meaningful, and a strong assembly.
Installation View: Our Orlando: Mado Smith, Mennello Museum of American Art
Images Courtesy of Jim Hobart, Macbeth Studio
MG: What should the public know before or while visiting the exhibition and what programs are planned during its final weeks?
SF: We aim to showcase creative talent and diverse practices to our patrons while recognizing the significance of local and regional makers in our community. Artists who dedicate themselves and approach their work with seriousness are vital, and one of our goals is to highlight those we select. This gathering features a remarkable mix of backgrounds, interests, education, experience, and two generations—offering meaningful reflections on our differences in a timely manner within our community.
For more information on Our Orlando and the Mennello Museum of American Art please visit: https://www.mennellomuseum.org/Home
Published July 29, 2026