Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens

The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens is an art museum in Jacksonville, Florida, founded in 1961 through the bequest of Ninah Cummer. It holds a permanent collection of more than 5,000 works spanning from 2100 BCE to the twenty-first century, with particular strengths in European and American paintings and Meissen porcelain. The institution encompasses historic gardens that rank among the oldest preserved garden designs in Florida, and it draws approximately 130,000 visitors each year.

The museum's origins trace to 1902, when Arthur and Ninah Cummer built their residence on Riverside Avenue in Jacksonville. Arthur's father, Wellington Cummer, was a lumber baron who had moved from Cadillac, Michigan, in 1896 and whose Cummer Lumber Company became the largest landowner in Florida at one point. In 1906, during their honeymoon, Ninah and Arthur purchased their first artwork, Paul King's painting Along the Strand, directly from the artist. After Arthur's death in January 1943, Ninah began collecting art in earnest, amassing sixty works during the final fifteen years of her life. In 1957, she established the DeEtte Holden Cummer Museum Foundation, named for her deceased infant daughter, to perpetuate her vision of a cultural center for the community.

Ninah and Clara Cummer, both widows, died in 1958. Ninah left her estate, including her gardens, to the foundation for a museum. The siblings' homes were demolished in 1960 to make way for the new building, designed by Saxelbye and Powell, which opened as The Cummer Gallery on November 11, 1961. The opening drew one thousand guests, including Jacksonville mayor W. Haydon Burns and Florida governor Farris Bryant. The museum added a wing for seventeenth-century art in 1971. In 1989, it acquired an ancient Egyptian stela dated to 2100 BCE, the oldest work in its collection. The Barnett building was purchased in the early 1990s and remodeled into the Art Connections education center, with the expansion completed in 1992. The adjacent Woman's Club of Jacksonville, a Tudor-style building, was acquired in 2002 for programs and events, though it was later demolished in 2016 due to termite infestation. The Jacobsen Gallery of American Art was added in 2005 and the Mason Gallery in 2006. The Cummer Gardens were listed on the National Register of Historic Places on January 25, 2010.

The permanent collection contains over 5,000 works, with the German source citing more than 6,000 works, dating from 2100 BCE to the twenty-first century. The collection is especially strong in European and American paintings and includes substantial holdings of Meissen porcelain. The ancient Egyptian stela acquired in 1989, dated to 2100 BCE, anchors the chronological range of the collection. The museum has also organized significant temporary exhibitions, including a 2013-2014 show, The Art of Empathy: The Cummer Mother of Sorrows in Context, which presented the museum's Mother of Sorrows alongside masterworks from other institutions, including a diptych of the Man of Sorrows and Mary from the Stiftsmuseum der Stadt Aschaffenburg, dated circa 1470. Other notable exhibitions have included 450 Years of French History in Florida (2014-2015) and Whitfield Lovell: Deep River (2015).

Ninah Cummer's original sixty works, all still in the collection, form the core of the museum's holdings. These include Paul King's Along the Strand, the couple's first purchase in 1906, depicting two men with horse-drawn carts on a beach. The ancient Egyptian stela from 2100 BCE remains the oldest object in the collection. The museum also holds a collection of 51 etchings by James McBey, which were featured in the inaugural exhibition in 1961 and subsequently became part of the permanent collection. The Cummer Mother of Sorrows has been sufficiently significant to serve as the centerpiece of a major contextual exhibition.

The museum building, constructed in 1961 on the site of the demolished Cummer homes, features an Art Deco facade and an inner courtyard paved with terra cotta tiles salvaged from the Cummers' original roof. One room from the original Cummer residence, known as the Tudor Room, was preserved and incorporated into the new structure. The grounds contain three flower gardens, the oldest dating to 1903, which have retained their original layout for more than a century. These gardens were designed by prominent landscape architects including the Olmsted Brothers, Thomas Meehan & Sons, and Ellen Biddle Shipman. Ninah Cummer commissioned Shipman to create the Italian Garden on her property after the division of the family estate in 1931, while Clara Cummer combined her portion with her existing garden to form the Olmsted Garden. The gardens offer views across the St. Johns River. The Barnett Concourse connects the main museum building to the Barnett building, which houses the Art Connections education center on its first floor and administrative offices on its second.

The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens is located in Jacksonville, Florida, in the United States. It is a private institution operated by the DeEtte Holden Cummer Museum Foundation. The museum's Art Connections education center, opened in the Barnett building in 1992, contains interactive educational installations and serves underprivileged and special education students. The museum and gardens together attract approximately 130,000 visitors annually. The institution maintains an active exhibition program and continues to expand its facilities and collections.