Cross Pollination takes flight from the influential series of paintings, The Gems of Brazil (1863-64) by Martin Johnson Heade, but expands outward to explore pollination in nature and ecology, cultural and artistic influence and exchange, and the interconnection between art and science, extending from the 19th century to now. The exhibition itself was developed collaboratively by the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, The Olana Partnership at the Olana State Historic Site, and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and draws from core work in each of their collections. Sixteen of Heade’s paintings from The Gems of Brazil currently in the collection of Crystal Bridges Museum are presented in conversation not only with works by fellow artists Thomas Cole and Frederic Church but also with artwork by their daughters, Emily Cole and Isabel Charlotte Church, as well as by major artists working today. This exhibition was created by The Olana Partnership at Olana State Historic Site, Thomas Cole National Historical Site, and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas.

Curated by
Kate Menconeri of Thomas Cole National Historical Site
Julia Rosenbaum and William L. Coleman of The Olana Partnership at Olana State Historic Site
Mindy N. Besaw of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
Ashley Holland of Art Bridges Foundation

The exhibition tour is organized by Crystal Bridges. Support for this exhibition and its national tour is provided by Art Bridges. Additional major support has been provided by the Henry Luce Foundation.

Images:
Martin Johnson Heade (American, 1819 – 1904), Hooded Visorbearer, c. 1863 – 1864, oil on canvas, 12 ¼ x 10 in., Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, 2006.93. Photography by Dwight Primiano.

Vik Muniz (American, b. 1961), Orchid and Three Brazilian Hummingbirds, 2013, digital C print, 40 x 53 in., Exhibition print courtesy of the artist and Sikkema, Jenkins & Co. Gallery, NY. © Vik Muniz / VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, in partnership with The Community Foundation for Northeast Florida, presents a retrospective exhibition to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Art Ventures Fund. Thirty artists have been selected to include one work — one for each year of Art Ventures grantmaking. Art Ventures is an endowed fund at The Community Foundation, launched in 1990 through a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts that was matched by generous local donors. The fund makes grants annually to individual artists and small arts organizations so recipients can explore or refine the next level of their craft, with more than $1.3 million invested since its inception.

Featured Artists

• Gail Beveridge – gailbeveridge.com
• Linda Broadfoot – lindabroadfoot.com
• Sarah Crooks – artistsarahcrooks.com
• Jim Draper – jimdraper.weebly.com
• Overstreet Ducasse – @overstreetducasse
• Annelies Dykgraaf – anneliesdykgraaf.com
• Doug Eng – dougeng.art
• Shannon Estlund –shannonestlund.com
• Crystal Floyd – crystalfloyd.com
• Zac Freeman – @zacfreemanart
• Julianne French – juliannefrench.com
• Jenny Hager – jennykhager.com
• Thomas Hager – @thomas_hager_artist
• Dustin Harewood – dustinharewood.com
• Marsha Hatcher – msehat2.faso.com
• Christina Hope
• Erin Kendrick – eriniscreative.co
• Mary Jo Maraldo
• Gil Mayers
• Traci Mims – @traci_mimsartist
• Hiromi Moneyhun – hiromipapercut.com
• Elena Øhlander – elenaohlander.com
• Princess Rashid – princessrashid.com
• Joe Segal – joesegal.com
• Jay Shoots – @jay_shoots_art
• Kathy Stark – kathystark.com
• Grant Ward
• Mary Williamson – mwilliamsondraw.com
• Tony Wood – twoodstudios.com
• Mary N. Worthy

Images:
Erin Kendrick, Simone, acrylic, ink and marker.

Hiromi Moneyhun, Bonsai, papercut.

On Display in Lost in Paradise, artist Carlos Rolón examines regrowth. In the early 20th century, both Florida and Puerto Rico saw rapid spikes in industrialization, migrations, and tourism. Both saw the rise and fall of commercial sugarcane production, tourism, industrialized agriculture, military bases, and testing exercises, with the natural landscape taking the brunt of abuses. Deteriorating beaches, draining wetlands, and clearing wooded areas made both locations more susceptible to flooding and coastline erosion.

In September 2017, two catastrophic hurricanes (Irma and Maria) made landfall, leaving trails of devastation in their wakes, and forever linking these two areas. Rolón’s new works draw inspiration from the architecture and natural landscapes that both Florida and Puerto Rico share and bring attention to nature’s unbridled ability to change its own landscape and humankind’s ability to rebuild. Rolón’s “losa isleño” (island tile) pieces break from traditional repetitive decorative design, to create new sculptural paintings that reference homes in Puerto Rico. His mirrored mosaic floral works create indestructible plant life to memorialize the native plants of Florida and Puerto Rico. This exhibition is curated by guest curator Aaron Levi Garvey and is courtesy of the Artist and Salon 94, NY.

Image:
Carlos Rolón (Puerto Rican/American, b. 1970), Losa Criolla, 2018, ceramic tile on aluminum panel, 105 1/2 x 65 in., Courtesy of the artist, Salon 94. and the New Orleans Museum of Art

Florida conjures visions of a lush tropical paradise, with vast natural resources and endless opportunities for those most daring to try. The cultural landscape, however, is a combination of nature and humanity; the landscape, from white sand beaches to murky swamps, provides the backbone; the inhabitants provide the culture. Florida’s cultural landscape is light, bright, expansive, and ripe with potential, but also wild, untamed, ambiguous, and obscure.

Artists across the centuries have explored the cultural landscape’s density of vegetation, people, and mystery – begging the viewer to question what is lurking beneath the literal and figurative shadows. Since Jacques le Moyne, the first European artist known to have visited Florida, arrived in 1564, artists have wrestled with deciding how to capture this dichotomy in their depictions of the land we call home. Through these works of art, explore how Florida and man coexist, whether in harmony or imbalance.

Image:
Herman Herzog, German, 1832-1932, Figure in a River Landscape, Oil on canvas, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. C. Herman Terry, AG.1987.11.1.

The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens is proud to present Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail The Dark Lioness, an internationally touring exhibition organized by Autograph, London and curated by Renée Mussai. The Cummer Museum will be the final venue for this exhibition in the United States.

In more than 80 self-portraits, celebrated visual activist Zanele Muholi (South African, b. 1972) uses their body as a canvas to confront the deeply personal politics of race and representation in the visual archive. Their ongoing series Somnyama Ngonyama, which translates to ‘Hail The Dark Lioness’ from isiZulu, one of the official languages of South Africa, playfully employs the conventions of classical painting, fashion photography and the familiar tropes of ethnographic imagery to rearticulate contemporary identity politics. Each black and white self-portrait asks critical questions about social (in)justice, human rights and contested representations of the Black body.

The exhibition features photographs taken between 2012 – 2019 in cities across Europe, North America, Asia and Africa. Muholi’s socially-engaged, radical brand of self-portraiture transforms found objects and quotidian materials into dramatic and historically loaded props, merging the political with the personal, aesthetics with history — often commenting on specific events in South Africa’s past, as well as urgent global concerns pertinent to our present times: scouring pads and latex gloves address themes of domestic servitude while alluding to sexual politics, cultural violence and the often-suffocating prisms of gendered identities. Rubber tires, cable ties or electrical cords invoke forms of social brutality and exploitation; sheets of plastic and polythene draw attention to environmental issues and global waste, while accessories like cowrie shells and beaded fly whisks highlight Western fascinations with clichéd, exoticized representations of African cultures and people.

Images:
Somnyama Ngonyama II, Oslo, 2015 © Zanele Muholi. Courtesy of Stevenson, Cape Town/Johannesburg and Yancey Richardson, New York.

Bester I, Mayotte, 2015 © Zanele Muholi. Courtesy of Stevenson, Cape Town/Johannesburg and Yancey Richardson, New York.

Reynier Leyva Novo’s multidisciplinary practice involves extracting historical data and official documents that the artist then transforms into a formally minimalist work with great conceptual meaning. He uses photography, video, installations, and new technologies. For this work, Novo created a software he called INk, capable of carrying out a precise analysis of the amount of ink used on handwritten and printed documents. In this case, INk was applied to a series of nine laws that in the artist’s view changed the recent history of Cuba. The exact amount of ink used in each document is reproduced here in the abstract form of a black rectangle.
Collection Pérez Art Museum Miami, gift of Jorge M. Darlene Pérez.

Image:
LAW OF FOREIGN INVESTMENT April 16th, 2014 LEY NO. 118. LEY DE LA INVERSIÓN EXTRANJERA 16 de abril de 2014 2,924.63 cm2 de tinta 453. 31 sq in of ink

(detail) Novo (Reynier Leyva Novo). 9 Leyes from the series El peso de la Historia, 2014. Collection Pérez Art Museum Miami, gift of Jorge M. and Darlene Pérez. Photo: Oriol Tarridas

Despite the fact that the center of the art world shifted from Paris to New York in the years immediately following the world wars, what emerged in the later part of the 20th century was a global exchange of ideas, with multiple centers and conversations. The artistic freedom encouraged during this period created the perfect environment for a proliferation of new ideas and styles, where both abstraction and representative work exist concurrently yet with different intonations. Canadian Rolph Scarlett pursued pure abstraction, while Mildred Thompson, a Jacksonville native, explored abstracted interpretations of unseen scientific theories. Rufino Tamayo and Oswaldo Guayasamín merged the modern aesthetic with their Latin American heritage. London-born Cecily Brown and American Bob Thompson used Old Master paintings as their inspiration but their final canvases balance on the edge of abstraction thanks to their use of color and gestural application of paint. British duo Gilbert & George and New Yorker Whitfield Lovell aim to create art that is representative and inclusive, while Damien Hirst, part of the Young British Artist movement, challenges audiences with his use of non-traditional media, like flies. With no set definition of a 20th-century aesthetic, these artists encourage viewers to reconsider our own expectations about art and its function in this global society.

Image:
Mildred Thompson (American, 1936 – 2003), Magnetic Fields, 1991, oil on canvas, 61 ¾ x 95 ½ in., Purchased with funds from the Rushton William Hays Revocable Trust and the Morton R. Hirschberg Bequest, AP.2019.1.1. Art and photo © The Mildred Thompson Estate, Atlanta, Georgia. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co., New York

British artist Rebecca Louise Law has designed and created a site-specific installation using both dried and fresh plant materials to form an immersive visitor experience that explores the relationship between humanity and nature. A proponent of sustainability, Law has also repurposed flowers that were previously used in her other installations from around the world. In her own words, “I want this installation to be a physical and participatory experience. After exploring the intimacy of the womb and the sensation of being consumed and cocooned in nature I would like to explore the momentum of life. From the second we are formed in cells we are moving and changing, within a world that is also evolving. The motion of walking through nature and witnessing it’s many forms from life to death. This rhythmic cycle that we are all participants of, fascinates me. This installation will be a short journey through nature, with its many forms and scents, stimulating the senses to the extreme.”

Image:
View of The Journey in the Minerva and Raymond K. Mason Gallery courtesy of Douglas J. Eng Photography.

In 1875, following the Red River War, the United States government ordered the arrest of 72 Cheyenne, Kiowa, Comanche, Caddo, and Arapaho warriors. Of these, 15 were Cheyenne. Taken from their families, most warriors thought they were being sent away to die. Shackled, they were loaded onto trains and sent east. Nearly four weeks later, they arrived at Ft. Marion in St. Augustine, Florida, their home for the next three years.

While at the fort, government agents tried to assimilate the imprisoned Cheyenne. Their once long hair was cut short and their clothing replaced by military uniforms. The Cheyenne were in an environment they barely understood. For nearly 100 years, this narrative was told and retold by historians and government agents. However, the Cheyenne have their own story to tell: a story highlighting the journey east, as well as the life they left behind. A story told in art through drawings created by Cheyenne warrior artists while imprisoned at Fort Marion.

This exhibition is drawn from the Arthur and Shifra Silberman Collection, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. It was curated by Gordon Yellowman, Director of Language and Cultural Programs, Cheyenne & Arapaho Tribes; Veronica Pasfield, Ph.D., Journalist, Independent Curator & Museum Decolonizer, Bay Mills Indian Community Member; and Eric D. Singleton, Ph.D., Curator of Ethnology, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.

Image:
Nock-ko-ist, also known as James Bear’s Heart (Cheyenne, 1851 – 1882), Distributing Annuities, 1875 – 1878, colored pencil on paper. Arthur and Shifra Silberman Collection, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, 1997.07.010.

America is a nation of stories.

Everyone has a story to tell—a life lived as a witness to and participant in events both private and shared. The stories that we tell as individuals are single strands in a grander narrative. Together, they build a consensus around the principles of a nation, maintaining a delicate balance between the one and the many, and the fulfillment of self and being better citizens. The exhibition captures the power of storytelling through artworks that express the dualities of artist and subject to reveal a simple truth: As much as we like to mythologize, America is not monolithic; the ideal and the reality diverge.

The artists in this exhibition have led vastly different lives, but they are all united as Americans. In this era of unremitting uniformity and conventionalizing through mass means of commercialization, communication, transportation, technology, and media, it is the very diversity of experience, heritage, perspective, and place that revitalizes, renews, and strengthens. Democracy’s promise is to welcome and direct that diversity toward an implicit and collective understanding of “the way things are.”

That is America.

This exhibition has been organized by the American Folk Art Museum, New York, with support provided by Art Bridges.

Originally curated for installation at the American Folk Art Museum, February 11, 2020 – January 3, 2021, by Stacy C. Hollander, Independent Curator. Tour coordinated by Emelie Gevalt, Curator of Folk Art, the American Folk Art Museum.