FOLIOCultural Fusion: Eartha White and Ninah Cummer
thru April 14, 2013
As part of the Fusion initiative, The Cummer will present an exhibition of archival material that documents the legacies of two important community leaders – Eartha White and Ninah Cummer. These remarkable women made tremendous contributions to our cities in their own unique ways. Their paths intersected with the founding of the Clara White Mission downtown, as Ninah Cummer was one of that organization’s supporters.
Jim Draper: Feast of Flowers
thru April 7, 2013
Jacksonville artist Jim Draper’s newest series, Pascua Florida: Feast of Flowers, celebrates the 500th anniversary of the first European engagement with Florida, the first named area in what is now the United States. This exhibition and its related programming serve as a contemporary investigation of and response to the essential eco-systems that have existed in Florida for thousands of years. As a collaborative effort, ecologists, biologists, philosophers, historians, taxonomists, and writers will provide essential material as anchors for the pictorial narratives that are being created for this exhibition. Its title, “Pascua de Florida” (Feast of Flowers), lifted from the naming of Florida in 1513, signals the attempt to explore the idea of natural resources as consumable commodities, while embracing the conceptual history of hungry European settlers in “la Florida’s” bountiful banquet, and Ponce de Leon’s painstaking search of the mythological Fountain of Youth.
La Florida
January 15 – October 6, 2013
As part of the Viva Florida 500 initiative, which commemorates Juan Ponce de Leon’s arrival on Florida’s east coast, The Cummer presents an exhibition that showcases this beautiful state through the centuries. Included as part of this installation are fanciful illustrations by Theodor de Bry that reinterpret the French arrival in Florida in 1564 at Fort Caroline and Thomas Moran’s 1877 recreation of Ponce de Leon’s search for the Fountain of Youth, as well as Florida landscapes by Winslow Homer, Herman Herzog, Martin Johnson Heade, and Frederick Frieseke, among others.
The Tsar’s Cabinet: Two Hundred Years of Russian Decorative Arts under the Romanovs
January 26 – April 27 2013
The Tsars’ Cabinet: Two Hundred Years of Russian Decorative Arts under the Romanovs features extraordinary objects that have been drawn from the finest private collection of Imperial Russian porcelain and decorative arts in the United States. Organized by the Muscarelle Museum of Art at the College of William and Mary, this exhibition highlights the prolific production of craftsmen and artists under the Romanovs. This magnificent collection of 160 pieces was used publicly and privately by Tsars from the mid-eighteenth century to the early twentieth century. Focal points include porcelain services to glassware, enamel, silver gilt, and decorated eggs. Many of the pieces were produced by the Imperial Porcelain Factory and Imperial Glass Factory, and many display expert enamel work from the renowned firms of Fabergé and Ovichinnikov.
The Tsar’s Cabinet was developed by the Muscarelle Museum of Art at the College of William and Mary, and tour organized by International Arts & Artists, Washington, DC.
The Great Age of the American Automobile
May 14 – September 8, 2013
This exhibition, comprised mainly of drawings from the collection of Frederick A. Sharf, showcases the beauty and ingenuity of American automotive design during the decades following World War II, a landmark period in car styling. An eclectic mix of illustrations, from preliminary sketches to fully rendered works, provides a rare glimpse into the creative process at some of America’s premiere car companies. Dating from an era when speed and power were increasingly important factors in automotive sales, these drawings show reference to the emerging technologies that influenced postwar car design, like airplanes and rockets. A selection of classic American cars will also be highlighted.
Modern Dialect: American Paintings from the John and Susan Horseman Collection
November 13, 2013 – January 26, 2014
Modern Dialect brings together 58 examples of American Scene and modernist paintings from the 1930s and 1940s, works that exposed and sometimes celebrated a changing America. Organized by the Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis, Tennessee, Modern Dialect will highlight works by some of the most respected American artists of the early twentieth century, including Charles Burchfield, George Ault, Charles Sheeler, and Clarence Carter, as well as introduce such fascinating artists as Clyde Singer, Lois Mabel Head, Arthur Osver, and others. The exhibition and its accompanying catalogue are structured thematically to reveal concerns of American painters from every region of the country.
The more than forty artists featured in Modern Dialect hail from all parts of the United States, and they painted wherever they found inspiration. These artists do not so much adhere to a single style as a common interest in portraying their realities in a decidedly modern fashion. From simplified and even fragmented rural landscapes to modern industrial cities and the people who inhabit them to purely abstracted compositions, the exhibition reveals the scope of the American modernist aesthetic and the vision and integrity each artist brought to the representation of the American experience.
One Family: Photographs by Vardi Kahana
October 2, 2013 – February 23, 2014
From the artist: This is the story of one family. It is the entire Jewish-Israeli narrative embodied in a single family. This is my family. To the big question of Jewish-Israeli identity, the photographs of my family provide a kaleidoscope of answers.
The point of departure for the exhibition is the photograph of my mother, Rivka, and her two sisters, Leah and Esther. Consecutive serial numbers are scorched on their left arms: A7760 A7761 A7762. Thus, in this order, they lined up in Auschwitz in the spring of 1944 to be tattooed. They didn’t know then whether they would live to see the next day. Today all three live in Israel; they have 31 grandchildren, and two of them have 50 great grandchildren.
The Art of Empathy
November 26, 2013 – February 16, 2014
This exhibition is designed to showcase a masterwork in The Cummer’s permanent collection, Mother of Sorrows (c. 1470). It is one of five known works by the Master of the Stötteritz Altar and was declared the “most important discovery in early German painting” by art historian Colin Eisler in 1984. The project will present new art historical and technical research that suggests that this work is a crucial link to the most important artists of Nuremberg (especially Hans and Wilhelm Pleydenwurff and Michael Wolgemut, the teacher of Albrecht Dürer), as well as the German painter/printmaker Martin Schongauer. Beyond the context of fifteenth-century northern European art, the exhibition aims to illuminate the rich world of late medieval religious devotion, especially the cultivation of empathy. The artistic and devotional contexts of The Cummer painting will be explored through twenty-one carefully selected artworks, nineteen of which are borrowed from collections in the United States and Germany.
The objects are arranged in two thematic sections. “Hands, Hair, and Veil: Meaningful Details” elaborates on the cultural and religious meanings of these details in relation to the cult of relics and various devotional practices. “Seeing and Weeping: Passion and Compassion” explores images and texts designed to elicit an empathetic response to Christ’s Passion and the emotional suffering of his mother Mary.
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