
Art
PERMANENT COLLECTION
Throughout the institution’s history, the Permanent Collection has served as the cornerstone in the Cummer Museum’s desire to “serve as the region’s centerpiece of education and involvement in all of the arts.” In accordance with the expressed wishes of its founder, Ninah May Holden Cummer, it seeks to serve as “a center of beauty and culture” for the benefit of “all of the people.”
The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens’ art collection has grown from the group of more than 60 works bequeathed by Mrs. Cummer, to more than 5,000 works acquired by gift, purchase, and bequest. The Permanent Collection spans from 2100 B.C. through the 21st century and includes masterpieces created by Mildred Thompson, Peter Paul Rubens, Winslow Homer, Thomas Moran, Whitfield Lovell, Norman Rockwell, and Romare Bearden. It is also home to the Wark Collection of Early Meissen Porcelain.
Please note, not all works from the Permanent Collection are on display at any given time. Please call 904.356.6857 in advance of your visit if you are looking for something in particular.
CURRENT EXHIBITIONS
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Fake News & Lying Pictures
Wednesday, November 1, 2023 to Monday, April 29, 2024
Comedians, editorial cartoons, and memes harness the power of satire, parody, and hyperbole to provoke laughter, indignation—even action.
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Tattoos in Japanese Prints from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Friday, October 27, 2023 to Sunday, January 14, 2024
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Maia Cruz Palileo: Days Later Down River
Wednesday, October 11, 2023 to Saturday, December 30, 2023
Maia Cruz Palileo: Days Later, Down River navigates themes of migration and the persistence of tacit knowledge in the face of assimilation.
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Jacksonville’s Norman Studios
Monday, April 11, 2022 to Wednesday, January 31, 2024
Before Hollywood dominated
Special Collections
The Cummer Museum is fortunate to count among its holdings seven special collections that add great depth to specific aspects of its Permanent Collection.
Please note, not all works from the Permanent Collection are on display at any given time. Please call 904.356.6857 in advance of your visit if you are looking for something in particular.
- The Constance I. and Ralph H. Wark Collection of Early Meissen Porcelain
- The Diving Boy
- The Eugène-Louis Charvot Collection
- Joseph Jeffers Dodge Collection
- The Dennis C. Hayes Collection of Japanese Prints
- The James McBey Collection
- The Eugene Savage Collection
- Permanent Collection Archives and Rare Books
Art in the Landscape
The Cummer Museum believes strongly in the connection between art and the natural environment. As a result, several sculptures that are part of the Permanent Collection have been integrated into the landscape throughout the campus. These include Janet Scudder’s playful Running Boy, on view in the courtyard, and Riis Burwell’s Entropy Series #26, nestled above the Italian Garden. A sculpture of Mercury by an unknown artist takes center stage in the Olmsted Garden. Diana of the Hunt, by American artist Anna Hyatt Huntington, is located in the Upper Tier. It was a gift to the Cummer Museum by the artist, who had a long history of installing her sculptures in gardens. She and her husband, Archer Huntington, established Brookgreen Gardens in South Carolina, an elaborate display garden with a large collection of outdoor sculpture.
UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS
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Sporting Fashion: Outdoor Girls1800 to 1960
Wednesday, February 28, 2024 to Sunday, May 19, 2024
The first exhibition to explore the
PAST EXHIBITIONS
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Julien de Casabianca: The Outings Project
Wednesday, November 18, 2015 to Sunday, June 5, 2016
In 2014, Julien de Casabianca, a French artist and filmmaker, conspired to release some of the world’s great art, typically locked away within museums, into urban settings.
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Fields of Color: The Art of Japanese Printmaking
Friday, February 23, 2018 to Sunday, January 13, 2019
Fields of Color: The Art of Japanese Printmaking presents nearly 20 prints from the 19th to early 20th century, which were selected from a prized collection of more than 230 examples.
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Augusta Savage: Renaissance Woman
Thursday, November 1, 2018 to Sunday, April 7, 2019
Organized by guest curator Jeffreen M. Hayes, Ph.D., the Augusta Savage: Renaissance Woman exhibition features nearly 80 works of art, including sculptures, paintings, and works on paper, and is the first to reassess Harlem Renaissance artist Augusta Savage’s contributions to art and cultural history in light of 21st-century attention to the concept of the artist-activist.Learn More > -
Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History
Friday, December 21, 2018 to Sunday, June 16, 2019
Author, illustrator and filmmaker, Vashti Harrison is an artist with a background in cinematography and screenwriting, with a passion for storytelling.
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French Moderns: Monet to Matisse, 1850 - 1950
Friday, June 14, 2019 to Sunday, September 8, 2019
French Moderns: Monet to Matisse, 1850–1950 exhibits approximately 65 works of art from the Brooklyn Museum’s renowned European collection and positions France as the artistic center of international modernism from the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries.Learn More > -
Kota Ezawa: The Crime of Art
Tuesday, March 12, 2019 to Sunday, December 1, 2019
This exhibition will bring together new and recent works related to Ezawa’s The Crime of Art series, a group of light-boxes and video animations that chronicle some of the most infamous and high profile museum heists in history.
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Louis Comfort Tiffany: Treasures from the Driehaus Collection
Friday, October 18, 2019 to Sunday, January 5, 2020
A celebration of beauty, Louis Comfort Tiffany: Treasures from the Driehaus Collection features more than 60 objects, spanning over 30 years of Tiffany’s prolific career. One of America’s most renowned artists, Louis Comfort Tiffany worked in nearly all of the media available to artists and designers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries—glass, ceramic, metalwork, jewelry, and painting.Learn More > -
Edmund Greacen and World War I
Tuesday, February 5, 2019 to Sunday, February 2, 2020
World War I (1914-1919) is arguably the defining event of the 20th century. For those who lived it, it was frightening, chaotic, and bizarre. It was traumatizing and transforming.
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Overstreet Ducasse
Friday, January 31, 2020 to Sunday, April 26, 2020
Like the fragmentary Egyptian sculptures on view in Striking Power, Ducasse’s constructions force us to contemplate the beauty of the broken, the intrigue of the incomplete, and the histories of ‘found’ objects—whether from ancient Egypt or contemporary Jacksonville.Learn More > -
Striking Power: Iconoclasm in Ancient Egypt
Friday, January 31, 2020 to Sunday, September 20, 2020
Striking Power explores the history of iconoclasm in relation to ancient Egyptian art through forty masterpieces on loan from the Brooklyn Museum of Art.Learn More > -
Cross Pollination: Heade, Cole, Church and Our Contemporary Moment
Wednesday, October 28, 2020 to Sunday, January 17, 2021
THIS EXHIBITION IS NOW CLOSED
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Art Ventures 30th Anniversary Exhibition
Wednesday, January 13, 2021 to Sunday, February 21, 2021
Art Ventures 30th Anniversary ExhibitionLearn More > -
Carlos Rolón: Lost in Paradise
Saturday, November 3, 2018 to Sunday, March 14, 2021
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.
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Eclectic Ecology: Landscape Perspectives from Ponce de León to Florida Man
Friday, December 20, 2019 to Monday, May 31, 2021
Florida conjures visions of a lush tropical paradise, with vast natural resources and endless opportunities for those most daring to try.
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Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail The Dark Lioness
Thursday, April 15, 2021 to Sunday, June 20, 2021
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 Mu -
Reynier Leyva Novo
Friday, March 26, 2021 to Sunday, October 3, 2021
Reynier Leyva Novo’s multidisciplinary practice involves extracting historical data and official documents that the artist then transforms into a formally minima
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Innovation and Imagination: The Global Dialogue in Mid to Late 20th Century Art
Tuesday, July 23, 2019 to Friday, December 31, 2021
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.Learn More > -
Rebecca Louise Law: The Journey
Friday, July 30, 2021 to Sunday, January 9, 2022
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.
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Imprisoned but Empowered: Cheyenne Warrior Artists at Fort Marion
Friday, June 4, 2021 to Tuesday, March 15, 2022
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. -
American Perspectives: Stories from the American Folk Art Museum Collection
Friday, February 11, 2022 to Sunday, May 22, 2022
America is a nation of stories.
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Buddha and Shiva, Lotus and Dragon: Masterworks from the Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection at Asia Society
Saturday, June 25, 2022 to Sunday, September 18, 2022
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.Learn More > -
Revolve: Spotlight on the Permanent Collection
Tuesday, March 15, 2022 to Sunday, November 13, 2022
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.
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Deborah Roberts: I'm
Friday, September 16, 2022 to Sunday, December 4, 2022
Deborah Roberts critiques notions of beauty, the body, race, and identity in contemporary society through the lens of Black children.
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Frieseke in Florida: Memories of Jacksonville in the 1880s
Friday, March 25, 2022 to Sunday, January 1, 2023
Noted American Impressionist painter Frederick Carl Frieseke moved to northeast Florida in 1881 at the age of seven.
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The Age of Armor: Treasures from the Higgins Armory Collection at the Worcester Art Museum
Friday, October 21, 2022 to Sunday, January 22, 2023
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?
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Anila Quayyum Agha: Flight Patterns
Friday, February 24, 2023 to Sunday, April 30, 2023
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.
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Rockwell Kent: The Shakespeare Portfolios
Friday, January 20, 2023 to Sunday, May 7, 2023
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
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James McBey: Etchings
Tuesday, November 29, 2022 to Sunday, May 14, 2023
The Cummer Museum owns one of the largest collection of works by artist James McBey (1883 – 1959) outside of his native Scotland. -
Reflections: The Art of Well-Being
Friday, April 7, 2023 to Sunday, June 18, 2023
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.
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Flamboyance! A Topiary Menagerie
Saturday, April 1, 2023 to Sunday, June 25, 2023
The pink flamingo—an iconic garden motif that is unquestionably Floridian.
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American Made: Paintings and Sculpture from the DeMell Jacobsen Collection
Friday, June 9, 2023 to Sunday, September 24, 2023
American Made: Paintings and Sculpture from the DeMell Jacobsen Collection surveys two centuries of American creativity.
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Outside: In
Tuesday, February 28, 2023 to Sunday, December 3, 2023
This exhibition brings together works by global contemporary artists who draw inspiration from the natural world and work in a variety of media, including painting, photography, assemblage, and video.