The Cummer Museum: Personal, Not Encyclopedic

Ninah Cummer spent fifty years filling her Riverside estate with art — European paintings, Meissen porcelain, Japanese prints — and the grounds with gardens descending in terraces to the St. Johns River. She left it all to the city. The museum feels curated in the original sense: chosen, not accumulated.

Small Monet water lily study so casually displayed I almost walked past it. The Wark Collection of Meissen porcelain: 18th-century monkeys in powdered wigs, shepherdesses with permanently alarmed expressions, tea sets with insects so realistic I checked twice. The Meissen factory was the first in Europe to produce hard-paste porcelain, and this collection is among the finest in the world, making its presence in Jacksonville a wonderful incongruity.

The three garden terraces — English (formal), Italian (reflecting pools, river at the far end), Olmsted (naturalistic, live oaks, azaleas) — justify the visit even without going inside. In the Italian Garden, tree roots have lifted the brick pavers over decades, creating gentle undulations — the garden being slowly reshaped by its own trees. Tuesday through Sunday. Gardens always free.