Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens with Photos and Videos

The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens is a museum located in Jacksonville, Florida. It was founded in 1961 after the death of Ninah Cummer, who bequeathed her gardens and personal art collection to the new museum. The Cummer Museum has since expanded to include the property owned by Ninah's brother-in-law, but it still includes her original garden designs and a portion of her home with its historic furnishing. The museum and gardens attract 130,000 visitors annually.

The permanent collection of the museum currently includes over five thousand works of art dating from 2100 BCE to the twenty-first century. The museum's collection is especially strong in European and American paintings and also includes substantial holdings of Meissen porcelain. The museum also has an award-winning education center, Art Connections, which possesses a number of interactive educational installations and serves underprivileged and special education students with its programs.

There are three flower gardens on the museum grounds, the oldest dating back to 1903. These gardens have preserved their original layout for over a century and were designed by landscape designers such as the Olmsted Brothers, Thomas Meehan and Sons, and Ellen Biddle Shipman. The Cummer Gardens are on the National Register of Historic Places.

The history of the Cummer Museum dates back to 1902. That year, Arthur and Ninah Cummer built their home on Riverside Avenue. Arthur's parents Wellington and Ada Cummer lived next door, and Arthur's brother Waldo and sister-in-law Clara lived nearby. Wellington Cummer was a wealthy lumber baron from Cadillac, Michigan who moved to Jacksonville in 1896. The Cummer Lumber company was, at one point, the largest landowner in Florida. Wellington also built the Jacksonville and Southwestern Railroad.

In 1906, on their honeymoon, Ninah and Arthur Cummer purchased their first piece of art, a painting titled Along the Strand directly from the artist, Paul King. The painting depicts two men riding horse-drawn carts on a beach. In 1931, Ada Cummer died, and her two sons tore down her old home and split the property. Ninah Cummer then hired landscape architect Ellen Biddle Shipman to create the Italian Garden on her and Arthur's land. Clara Cummer had her portion combined with her existing garden to create the Olmsted Garden.

After Arthur's death in January 1943, Ninah Cummer began collecting art in earnest. During the fifteen years before her death, Ninah expanded her art collection to sixty pieces, all of which are still in the Museum’s collection today. In 1957, the year before her death, Ninah announced that her gifts would “make only a small beginning toward a large vision” and hoped “that others will share this vision and by their interest and contributions will help establish here a center of beauty and culture worthy of the community.” She created the DeEtte Holden Cummer Museum Foundation, named for the deceased infant daughter of the Cummers, to manage her vision after her death.

Ninah Cummer and Clara Cummer, both now widows, died in 1958. Ninah Cummer left her estate, including her gardens, to the DeEtte Holden Cummer Museum Foundation for a museum to house her art collection. In 1960, the siblings' homes were both demolished in order to build the museum. Clara and Waldo's property was sold and now houses the Northeast Florida chapter of the American Red Cross and the Cummer's education center, Art Connections. Parts of the gardens were also destroyed during this demolition. The new building was designed by Saxelbye and Powell and constructed in 1961. It featured an Art Deco façade and an inner courtyard that was paved with the terra cotta tiles of the Cummers' old roof. One room from the original Cummer home, known as the Tudor Room, was preserved and incorporated into the new museum. The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, then named The Cummer Gallery, opened on November 11, 1961.

The museum's first opening was attended by one thousand guests, including Jacksonville Mayor W. Haydon Burns and Florida Governor Farris Bryant. Burns was noted as saying, "The people of Jacksonville have never received a gift comparable in generosity or beauty to the museum… a testament to the heritage of the past and representing the strength and character of those who were leaders of Jacksonville in the past." The museum's collection was on display, as well as three special exhibitions: a collection of 51 etchings by James McBey (now part of the Museum’s permanent collection), a selection of French paintings on loan from a New York gallery, and an exhibition of American art on loan from the National Academy of Design.

In 1971, ten years after the museum's opening, the Cummer celebrated the addition of a new wing for 17th-century art.

In 1989, the museum acquired an ancient Egyptian stela, dating back to 2100 BCE, making it the oldest piece of art in the museum's collection.

The Cummer Museum acquired the Barnett building in the early 1990s, remodeling the first floor into the museum’s education center, Art Connections, and using the second floor for administrative offices. The two buildings were connected by the Barnett Concourse, and two more major galleries were added. This expansion was completed in 1992. In early 2002, the museum acquired the adjacent Woman's Club of Jacksonville, a Tudor-style residential building which would serve as a space for programs and events for the museum. The museum also acquired the Jacobsen Gallery of American Art in 2005, and the Mason Gallery in 2006.

On January 25, 2010, the Cummer Gardens were added to the National Register of Historic Places.

In March 2016, the board of trustees of the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens announced that the old Woman's Club of Jacksonville, which was to become a center for programming for the museum, would have to be demolished because of an infestation of Formosan subterranean termites, costing the museum its $7 million investment into the building. It had been previously listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Cummer Museum’s art collection has expanded from the group of more than 60 works of Ninah Cummer's collection to over 5,000 works of art. The permanent collection spans from 2100 BCE through the 21st century and includes pieces created by Peter Paul Rubens, Winslow Homer, Thomas Moran, Norman Rockwell, and Romare Bearden. It is also home to the Wark Collection of Early Meissen Porcelain. Pieces in the museum's collection were either donated to the museum, like the Wark collection, or they were purchased using the museum's acquisition fund, which is sustained through individual gifts and fundraising events.

The Cummer Museum possesses seven special collections:

One room from the original Cummer home, known as the Tudor Room, was preserved in order that "the public at large may enjoy some insight into the personality of the owner." It retains all of its historic furniture, including a number of paintings from the Cummers' original collection. It also features portraits of both Ninah and Arthur Cummer, as well as a needlepoint by Ninah depicting her Italian Garden.

A number of sculptures that are a part of the Permanent Collection are displayed in the landscape around the museum. Janet Scudder's Running Boy is on display in the courtyard, and Riis Burwell’s Entropy Series #26 sits above the Italian Garden. A sculpture of Mercury by an unknown artist stands in the center of the Olmsted Garden. Diana of the Hunt, by American artist Anna Hyatt Huntington, is located in the upper tier of the gardens. A sculpture garden surrounds the outside of the Barnett building. Various other pieces are on display inside the museum.

The Cummer Gardens are 1.45 acres of historic gardens made up of native Florida plants, large live oak trees, and a number of reflecting pools, fountains, ornaments and sculptures. They are split into three themed gardens and a large lawn on the St. Johns River. Many of the original trees on the property were felled in order to make room for flower beds, but those that remained grew up to 150 feet in size. Ninah Cummer adopted the lion as her personal motif, and lion details can be found all over the gardens.

The first gardens on the Cummer property were designed by Ossian Cole Simonds in 1903, just after the adjoining house was completed.Thomas Meehan and Sons of Philadelphia redesigned this garden and created what would become known as the English Garden in 1910. Ellen Biddle Shipman designed the Italian Garden in 1931. Sections of Clara and Waldo's garden were designed by William Lyman Phillips, a partner in the Olmstead Brothers firm. The Olmsted Brothers also advised Ninah on a design for a wall garden in 1922, but she chose to plant a garden designed by William Mercer of Philadelphia. The Cummer Gardens were selected for the National Register of Historic Places because they represent the history of American landscape design in the first four decades of the twentieth century.

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