Matheson Museum Temporary Exhibits

Since its grand opening in 1994, the Matheson History Museum has been an integral part of our city’s cultural landscape, welcoming visitors from north central Florida and beyond. We strive to make the museum accessible and welcoming to all.

Located in the heart of downtown Gainesville, the Matheson History Museum is home to the 1867 Matheson House, permanent and temporary exhibits on Alachua County and Florida history, and a local history library and archives filled with resources for the researcher and the curious alike. Throughout the year we host a variety of programs on local and Florida history.

Chains of Steele: Money, Power, and Influence
Main Exhibit Hall
Opens Wednesday, August 19, 2026

Chains of Steele: Money, Power, and Influence is the result of a year and a half of research, planning, and writing. Utilizing unique documents stored in the museum’s archive, the exhibit will examine two ancestors of Gainesville’s Matheson family, Augustus and Augusta Steele, and the ways that they interacted with and benefited from the institution of American slavery.

Augustus was born in 1792 in Massachusetts, and at the time of his birth slavery was outlawed in that state. At the time of his death, he was a devoted Confederate official, advocate for slavery, and enslaver. The exhibit will look at what choices brought him to that point and how he benefited from those choices.

His only child, Augusta, was part of the last generation that grew up supported by the institution of slavery. She turned 18 in 1865, the year that emancipation reached Florida and the rebellion collapsed. The ways that her life went on afterwards tell us something about the long-lasting impacts slavery had on our history.

This original exhibition will feature Matheson Family photos rarely on display, excerpts from the family’s papers, and a memorial to the people the Steeles enslaved with the first biographies ever written about these individuals.