Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens

The Cummer Museum is Jacksonville's best art museum, occupying a riverside mansion in Riverside that belonged to the Cummer family — one of the city's most prominent industrial dynasties — and expanding into a purpose-built gallery wing behind it. The collection ranges from ancient Greek antiquities to 20th-century American painting, with particular strengths in European Old Masters and Wark Collection of early Meissen porcelain, one of the finest outside Germany.

The gardens are as important as the galleries. Three distinct formal gardens run along the St. Johns River, including an English garden, an Italian garden with a reflecting pool, and an Arts and Crafts garden with a wisteria-draped pergola. The river view from the gardens, looking across to downtown, is one of the best in Jacksonville. Allow at least two hours — the combination of the collection and the grounds merits it.

things to do museum riverside avondale
A story
The Cummer's original collection was assembled by Ninah Cummer, who began buying European and American paintings in the early 20th century with a particular interest in Italian Baroque and Dutch Old Masters. When she donated the collection to the city in 1958, it came with a strict stipulation: admission must always remain free or affordable. The formal gardens along the river were designed in part to the specification of Arthur Shurcliff, the landscape architect who also planned Colonial Williamsburg.