Dr. Scott Brown presents virtual art lectures with Beaches Cummer
Dr. P. Scott Brown, University of North Florida professor of art history, will present three upcoming virtual art talks as part of the Cummer Beaches lecture series, sponsored by Dr. Diane DeMell Jacobsen.
The focus of the series this year is the museum’s founder, Ninah Cummer, and the lectures are tied to the Cummer Museum’s 60th anniversary observations. Brown will present:
Ninah Cummer’s Museum: On Women and Art in American Society
7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 11
Ninah Cummer, as the founder and namesake of the Cummer Museum, is cousin in this sense to Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, Helen Clay Frick, and Isabella Stewart Gardner, among others. These famous collectors underscore the impact of women on collecting and museums in America. Women have long played key roles in America as collectors, scholars, critics, patrons, and advocates for art, but their contributions have equally often gone unacknowledged or been obscured. The 60th anniversary of the Cummer’s foundation is an occasion to reflect on the work of the women of Ninah Cummer’s generation as advocates for museums and for art as a public good. Register to attend.
The Cummer Gardens: Natural Beauty and Beautiful Cities in the American Landscape
7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 6
With the majestic Cummer Oak overlooking the broad St. John’s River as it bends and narrows toward downtown, the Cummer Gardens are a sanctuary beloved by many in Jacksonville. The Gardens are also fundamental both to the Cummer's collection and to Ninah Cummer’s ideas about art and beauty. Ninah sought some of America’s leading landscape architects to design her gardens, including Ellen Biddle Shipman and the Olmstead firm, and she was never still—constantly rethinking, adding, and changing. For Ninah and for us today, the gardens offer the opportunity and a compelling reason to think deeply about the meaning and importance of natural beauty in the urban landscape, about the cost and value of beautiful cities.
Treasures from the Collection of Ninah Cummer
7 p.m. Thursday, March 24
The works that Ninah Cummer bequeathed from her own collection to found the Museum form a portrait of her as a collector and founder, as a woman both of her time and looking toward the future that she meant the Museum to serve. Ninah’s collection offers insights into her concepts of art, beauty, and history and perspective on how our own concepts have evolved and changed since the Museum’s founding. This talk features some of Ninah’s most fascinating treasures, including fixtures of the permanent galleries and other gems from the Museum vaults.