This exhibition will present 67 masterpieces collected by John D. Rockefeller III (1906–1978) and his wife Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller (1909–1992), illuminating the cultures and history of Asia. This important collection underscores art’s capacity to encourage cross-cultural dialogue and influence economic and public policy. The selection of sculptures, bronzes, and ceramics ranges from the late 6th century BCE to the early 19th century CE, and originates from Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tibet, and Vietnam.

The Rockefellers believed that by building a collection of the highest quality and sharing it with the public, they could educate Americans about the importance and diversity of Asian art, as a means to elevate their understanding of Asian cultures and create bridges to future economic and sociopolitical dialogue and engagement. Sherman E. Lee (1918–2008), an important art museum director and scholar of Asian art, worked with the Rockefellers as an advisor to their collection, and his influence will be addressed throughout this exhibition. The collection was bequeathed to Asia Society in New York City following Mr. Rockefeller’s death in 1978.

This exhibition is co-organized by the American Federation of Arts and Asia Society Museum. The national tour of the exhibition is supported in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

Image:
Made in Pakistan, Gandhara area, Head of Buddha, Kushan period, late 2nd-3rd century. Schistose phyllite, 14 ½ x 7 ¾ x 9 ¼ in., Asia Society, New York: Mr. and Mrs. JohnD. Rockefeller 3rd Collection (1979.2) Photography by Synthescape, Courtesy of Asia Society and American Federation of Arts.

Throughout the Museum’s 60-year history, its permanent collection has grown from 60 objects to more than 5,000. See this collection in a new light as familiar works are paired with exciting loans from global contemporary artists working across media. Even though they span generations and geographic boundaries, Tiffany Chung, Jean-Ulrick Désert, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Juan Fontanive, Titus Kaphar, John Frederick Kensett, Amy Sherald, Frans Snyders, Pat Steir, and Mildred Thompson, among others, explore the concepts of portraiture, landscape, cartography, allegory, and natural world. Come take a moment to consider the expected, and unexpected, links between them.

This Exhibition is organized by the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens.

Images:
Marie Victoire Lemoine (French, 1754 – 1820), Portrait of a Youth in an Embroidered Vest, 1785 oil on canvas, Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, Purchased with funds from the Cummer Council, AP.1994.3.1.

Titus Kaphar (American, b. 1976), Billy Lee: Portrait in Tar, 2016, tar and oil on canvas, 60 x 48 in., Bill and Christy Gautreaux Collection, Kansas City, Missouri, © Titus Kaphar. Image courtesy of Jeremy Lawson and the artist.

Deborah Roberts critiques notions of beauty, the body, race, and identity in contemporary society through the lens of Black children. Her mixed media works on paper and on canvas combine found images, sourced from the Internet, with hand-painted details in striking figural compositions that invite viewers to look closely, to see through the layers. She focuses her gaze on Black children—historically, and still today, among the most vulnerable members of our population—investigating how societal pressures, projected images of beauty or masculinity, and the violence of American racism conditions their experiences growing up in this country as well as how others perceive them. Simultaneously heroic and insecure, playful and serious, powerful and vulnerable, the figures Roberts depicts are complex, occasionally based on actual living or historical persons.

As the artist noted in an interview for her 2018 exhibition at the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, “What I want as an artist is for the viewer to see that face, first and foremost, as the face of a child because that’s the image I think you need to come to. I tell my audiences that this is the idea—to ‘see’ that little girl! I am also hoping they see vulnerability, strength, and beauty. If you can find yourself in her face, then you can see and embrace your own humanity. Once you see me as human, then we can coexist equally. That’s the basis of the work.”

Deborah Roberts: I’m is organized by The Contemporary Austin. The exhibition and catalogue are made possible with the generous support from the Ford Foundation, an Art Works grant from the National Endowment of the Arts, Vielmetter Los Angeles, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, The Girlfriend Fund, Suzanne McFayden and other individual donors from Austin and around the country.

Image:
Deborah Roberts (American, b. 1962), The duty of disobedience, 2020, mixed media collage on canvas, 72 x 100 in., Artwork © Deborah Roberts. Courtesy the artist; Vielmetter Los Angeles; and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London. Image courtesy The Contemporary Austin. Photograph by Paul Bardagjy.

Noted American Impressionist painter Frederick Carl Frieseke moved to northeast Florida in 1881 at the age of seven. Along with his father and sister, they lived in Floral Bluff, just outside the Jacksonville city limits. Today, this location is in Arlington, not far from Jacksonville University. The young boy was enchanted with his new surroundings. His family stayed four years before returning to Michigan. Although he would not return, Frieseke never forgot his time on the First Coast. In his mid-40s, while living in France, he created a series of watercolors and paintings inspired by his childhood, and in 1936, recounted his memories to his daughter. The words that follow are Frieseke’s own, part of a narrative he called Uneventful Reminiscences. Like the watercolors on view, it is part of the Cummer Museum’s permanent collection. In conjunction with our own anniversary and the City’s Bicentennial, we hope you enjoy this snapshot of life in Jacksonville in the 1880s.

This Exhibition is organized by the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens.

Image:
Frederick Carl Frieseke (American, 1874 – 1939), The Jetty, 1921, watercolor on paper, Purchased with funds from the Mae W. Schultz Charitable Lead Trust, The Francis and Miranda Childress Foundation, Inc. and the Kenneth G. Lancaster Restricted Fund, AP.2001.1.12.

The image of the knight in shining armor is familiar to us from fairy tales, films, and computer games, but what was the reality behind the myth?

Armor is as old as human civilization. It has taken many forms and served many purposes. It had an obvious practical function in an age when warfare was common and fighting was hand-to-hand. But it has always had a cultural role as well, symbolizing personal identity, social prestige, and the values of a heroic past.

The classic knightly suit of plate armor was only used in Europe, and only for about 300 years, from the mid-1300s to the mid-1600s—a very short time in the span of human history. In this exhibition containing nearly 100 objects from the Higgins Armory Collection at Worcester Art Museum, you will learn how armor came into being, how it changed over time, how it was made and used, how it disappeared, and how it has left enduring traces in our cultural memory.

This Exhibition was organized by the Worcester Art Museum.

Image:
Half-Armor for a Member of the Papal Guard, 1570–90, Northern Italian, perhaps Brescia, blued and engraved steel with gilding, brass, modern leather and velvet, The John Woodman Higgins Armory Collection, 2014.1137.

World-renowned Pakistani American artist Anila Quayyum Agha uses art to explore her dual experiences living in her native country and as an immigrant in the United States. Although inspired by South Asian, Middle Eastern, and North African designs, her work exists outside of a single religious or cultural experience and instead invites viewers to explore the space in between. Agha explores themes around the constructed boundaries of gender, race, religion, culture, and the natural environment that prevent dialogue and exchanges between world civilizations and presents viewers the opportunity to embrace the harmonies that exist within the shadows of cultural divergence.

Curated by Holly Keris, J. Wayne & Delores Barr Weaver Chief Curator of the Museum, the exhibition Flight Patterns features two of Agha’s large sculptural installations. Each is internally lit and projects intricate geometric patterns throughout the gallery enveloping visitors as they view the work. This exhibition also includes a selection of mixed media works and wall sculptures. This immersive experience will allow Museum-goers to be a part of the sculptural shadowplay, and, therefore, become participants in the work itself.

She writes: “The consciousness of knowing what is markedly different about the human experience also bears the gift of knowing its core commonalities and it is these tensions and contradictions that I try to embody in my artwork. Through the use of a variety of media, from large sculptural installations to embroidered drawings I explore the deeply entwined political relationships between gender, culture, religion, our natural environment, labor and social codes. Using embroidery as a drawing medium in the flatworks or via ornately patterned light sculptures, I reveal the multiple layers resulting from the interaction of concept and process and to bridge the gap between modern materials and historical patterns of traditional oppression and domestic servitude. The conceptual ambiguity of the resulting patterns, create an interactive experience in which the onlooker’s subjective experiences of alienation and belonging become part of the piece and its identity.”

This exhibit was organized by the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens.

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

In March 1935, Nelson Doubleday of the publishers Doubleday, Doran & Company, an affiliate of Garden City, approached noted American artist and illustrator Rockwell Kent to provide illustrations for their forthcoming volume of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. One of the most popular illustrators of his era, Kent, who studied with William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri, was recognized for his illustrations of other classic volumes, including Candide (1928) and Moby Dick (1930). Admirers of Shakespeare’s works undoubtedly will recognize his well-known plots, captured simply in Kent’s quintessential linear style. This exhibition celebrates the legacies of two leading figures in their respective fields on the 400th anniversary of the publishing of Shakespeare’s first folio of plays.

This exhibition was curated by The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens.

The Cummer Museum owns one of the largest collection of works by artist James McBey (1883 – 1959) outside of his native Scotland. Although he left school at 14 to pursue a job in banking, in the evenings, he spent much of his time in the art section of the Free Library. Book by book, McBey studied the work of great artists and taught himself to paint, draw, and etch. His first print, an image of the Aberdeenshire coast, was drawn on a copper plate he purchased from a plumber, and he created his own printing press by adapting the kitchen laundry wringer. After finishing his second print, he crafted another printing press with rollers made from a discarded propeller shaft he found in a local yard.

McBey’s early work captured his native Scotland, from quiet seascapes to animated street scenes and imposing views of Edinburgh Castle. To perfect his craft, he traveled to the Netherlands to study works by Rembrandt (1606 – 1669), and then to Spain and Morocco. His first solo exhibition was held in London in 1911 and recorded more than 100 sales – McBey left banking to pursue art full time.

As an artist for the British Expeditionary Force during World War I, McBey created boldly realized visual documents of the landscapes and people he encountered. Even during wartime, when all sketching was prohibited without special permission, McBey continued to diligently observe and record the events that unfolded before him. His friend, artist and fellow soldier Martin Hardie, who was also a curator at the Victoria & Albert Museum, reported that McBey “had to depend on thumbnail notes, and on small sketches made in the palm of the hand, and even inside his pocket” to gather the material needed for creating his prints.

McBey became an American citizen in 1942 and enjoyed a series of successful exhibitions in New York. Following the Second World War, he settled in Morocco and worked exclusively in drawings and watercolors until his death.

This exhibition was organized by the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens.

Image:
James McBey (British, 1883 – 1959), Riva at Dusk, 1925, etching, Gift of Mrs. James McBey, AG.1961.1.128.

For centuries, art has paved the way to connect with our inner self, to universally and inclusively allow us to communicate our feelings and emotions. It can also nurture physical and emotional healing and wellbeing. Whether it is through the beauty and serenity found in nature, the music we hear in our mind’s ear, or the empowerment received through visual artistic expression, art can be a personal sanctuary from life’s realities.

Arts4All Florida, in partnership with the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, proudly presents Reflections: The Art of Wellbeing, an exhibition of works created by Florida artists of all abilities, including individuals who may confront physical, social, or emotional challenges. Reflecting on notions of wellbeing, the artists explore themes of beauty, belonging, tranquility, joy, passion, self-expression, inspiration, and empowerment. We hope you enjoy these works.

Arts4All Florida’s mission is to provide, support, and champion arts education and cultural experiences by and for people with disabilities. Partnerships, such as this exhibition with the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens build the foundation for universally inclusive and equitable arts and cultural programs. For information, visit www.arts4allflorida.org. Arts4All Florida thanks the National Endowment for the Arts and the Florida Department of State Division of Arts and Culture for supporting this exhibition.

Image:
Brenda Schwend, Callahan, FL, Essence of Being, Oil on canvas

The pink flamingo — an iconic garden motif that is unquestionably Floridian. In the Museum’s first ever horticultural exhibition, 50 topiary flamingos planted with pink flowering begonias will take over the Museum’s historically significant gardens, providing a fun, ironic, and whimsical riff on the classic garden ornament. Posed in groups throughout the gardens and grounds, the flamingos are a playful juxtaposition against the formality of our gardens, inviting visitors to experience the landscape through a new lens of color and creativity.

The ancient art of topiary—the artful pruning and shaping of plants into decorative shapes—dates to the first century C.E. The fantastical style of topiary on display during Flamboyance was pioneered by the Walt Disney Company in the 1960s, when the company began utilizing steel mesh frames wrapped over metal support structures in the shapes of animals, including Disney characters. The steel mesh structures are planted with fast-growing plants that can achieve the desired effect in far less time than traditional topiary art.

The flamingos are on loan from the Franklin Park Conservatory in Columbus, Ohio. They are planted with begonias and grown for display by Museum horticulturists and volunteers.

Image:
Courtesy of the Franklin Park Conservatory’s presentation.