Art & Culture Features
Making a Place for Jacksonville
Whether you are downtown, on the Westside, in Durkeeville, or out at the beaches, Jacksonville’s public art offerings have expanded tremendously, with murals as the anchor to provide a positive impact and help foster a cultural identity for the city. Considering that the majority of the city’s murals have only materialized within the past five years, it’s easy to take for granted that Jacksonville’s urban core is as colorful as it is today.
read moreLift Every Voice Through the Power of Art
In 2015 ArtRepublic put forth a five-year plan to show Jacksonville how the power of world-class public art could engage the community and spawn economic development. ArtRepublic’s founder and CEO, Jessica Santiago, partnered with the private sector to create a massive transformation to downtown Jacksonville through annual productions of high-quality public art, events, and exhibitions.
read moreThe Mural Issue: Pedestrian-friendly Maps
Take in Jacksonville’s outdoor galleries using our pedestrian-friendly neighborhood maps. Five maps in total will show you where to find murals in Downtown; Brooklyn/Riverside; Avondale/Murray Hill; Eastside/LaVilla/Springfield; and San Marco.
read moreYellow House: Art Inside & Out
The CoRK Arts District, the first of its kind artists’ district in Jacksonville, opened ten years ago. It has since grown from one building to three with a mission to support artists in the community by offering workspaces for creativity and collaboration. True to its mission, the district’s artists were invited to express themselves by painting murals on the building’s exterior.
read moreArt of Solidarity
Jacksonville has a steadfast record of social activism and civil rights movements, stemming from a violent racial history that (for many) is uncomfortable to talk about; a history that is woven so deeply into the community, and our country, that it continues to this day.
read moreRomancing the Mirror: An Exhibition with a View
Highlighting women artists continues to be a trend within international, national, and community-aligned art institutions. While women-identified artists make up the majority of nationwide graduate programs, their commercial gallery and museum representation remains at a dearth. “Romancing the Mirror,” now on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Jacksonville, aims to close that gap through a group exhibition contending with contemporary issues in femme identification.
read moreThe Florida Art Collection
One of the most extensive Florida-themed art collections ever assembled was given to the Harn Museum of Art in December 2020. The Florida Art Collection, Gift of Samuel H. and Roberta T. Vickers includes more than 1,200 works of art that capture Florida’s landscape, history and people, and scenes of daily life. Among the gifts are works by celebrated artists such as John Singer Sargent, Winslow Homer, Martin Johnson Heade, and Thomas Moran.
read moreAmerican Impressionism
Works by leading American painters in the late-19th and early-20th century, including Robert Henri, George Inness, George Luks, Gari Melchers, John Sloan, John Twachtman, and J. Alden Weir.
read moreArtful Business
Scratch a great collection of art and you will find a grand mélange of situation, opportunity, passion, and competition to rival any soap opera, with plot lines to intrigue and personalities to love, hate, loathe, or admire. Royals and the royally rich may get the most attention but none of it would have happened without businessmen and women. In Russia you find them all.
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