An exhibit displaying some of the crown jewels of the Masterworks Foundation’s Bermudiana collection will open tonight at the Botanical Gardens gallery.

The exhibit, Treasure Island, is designed to showcase the works of internationally acclaimed artists who have been inspired by Bermuda’s architecture, vibrant culture and serene atmosphere.

“These paintings are probably the most valuable of the collection, in terms of money and their overall historical and cultural value,” said Elise Outerbridge, curator and director of collections at the Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art.

The exhibit features 30 of the gallery’s most cherished pieces by artists who specialise in a wide range of styles. “There’s not one medium that we don’t have in the exhibit,” Mrs Outerbridge noted.

The gallery has been lucky enough to receive important and culturally significant pieces of artwork through donations over the years. The exhibit will display acquired works from Winslow Homer, Yousuf Karsh, Georgia O’Keeffe, Albert Gleizes, Marsden Hartley, Andre Beiler, Charles Demuth and many other distinguished artists.

“We have never had an endowment and we don’t get any Government funds. Everything we have achieved and acquired is through personal and corporate donations,” said Mrs. Outerbridge. “We’ve been very lucky that people have been so generous to us and that’s another part of the treasure of the exhibit. To be able to display this in one room – our Rick Fairies Gallery -- has been pretty thrilling.”

Three works by Winslow Homer, one of the most prominent artists of 19th-century and still a figurehead of American art, are central to the exhibit. Having painted 18 watercolors of Bermuda landscapes during his visits in 1899 and 1901, the Island’s light and physical environment had a pronounced influence on Homer’s artwork.

Among Homer’s Bermuda works, his painting Inland Water (1901) – which shows a Bermuda cottage against the backdrop of the Great Sound -- “is what really put Masterworks on the international map,” said Mrs Outerbridge.

“It is the quintessential Bermuda painting and is now worth two and a quarter million dollars.”

Also featured in the unique exhibit is the artwork of Albert Gleizes, a French artist and writer who played a major role in the cubism movement of the early 20th century. Joining Charles Demuth and Marsden Hartley in Bermuda in 1917, the three renowned artists made Bermuda one of the three locales where artists spearheaded cubism, the others being France and Spain.

“What makes our collection unique on the face of this earth is having cubist work,” said Masterworks founder and creative director, Tom Butterfield. “That’s a pretty rare thing. Bermuda fits into the oeuvre of cubism because of the angularity and architecture of the homes.”

The work of Georgia O’Keeffe, the “mother of American modernism” who visited Bermuda twice, is also included in the Treasure Island exhibit. Accompanying her piece is a 1956 photograph of her taken by Yousuf Karsh, a famous American-Canadian photographer whose photos have not been reprinted since his death in 2002.

Mrs Outerbridge believes that the selective collection displayed in Treasure island “really condenses and distils the collection into the best of the best”.

The exhibit will remain open through August 13.