As death bed promises go, this one was particularly beguiling.

Twenty-one years ago, Tom Jacobsen, a successful banking executive, was succumbing to leukemia. He knew he wasn’t going to make it.

In his final days, he had a request for his wife Diane DeMell Jacobsen: “Do you think you can build an American art collection that can be transformative?”

She’s spent every day since trying to do so.

Her efforts are on view now through September 24, 2023, during the exhibition “American Made: Paintings and Sculpture from the DeMell Jacobsen Collection,” at the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, appropriately, in Jacksonville. The couple met there.

New Yorker Diane DeMell moved to Jacksonville in 1978 when she was hired as the local IBM branch manager. She continues residing in the area.

Though many objects from the DeMell Jacobsen Collection have been on view at other museums ranging from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art to the Smithsonian American Art Museum, “American Made” marks the first comprehensive display of the collection. More than 100 artworks are featured, masterpieces spanning the Colonial-era through about 1950 in this presentation.

The Collection is comprised exclusively of American art, artists born, or who have lived, in America.

“Most of America doesn’t know about the great art that we have,” DeMell Jacobsen said at a press preview for the Cummer exhibition. “They don’t know about all of artists. They certainly don’t know all about the women artists, the people of color. They don’t know about the full range of the diversity of America, and American art.”

Substantial representation of female and African American artists distinguishes the Collection. DeMell Jacobsen has an entirely separate collection of Native American art.

“I have a family member who is from Korea and when she was a little girl, I took her to the museum and she looked around at all the portraits and said, ‘how come there’s nobody here that looks like me?’” DeMell Jacobsen told Forbes.com. “Part of my job is to make sure we represent all of America.”

Staring back at visitors from the museum walls are a cross section of American people. George and Martha Washington, Black laborers, a circus worker. And a beautiful Asian girl in Robert Henri’s 1914 Chow Choy.

Further distinguishing the Collection, and the foundation DeMell Jacobsen set up to support it, is its public nature. DeMell Jacobsen doesn’t have a single item from the Collection in her home. As soon as items are acquired, she and her staff are looking to place them in museums.

Such was the case with one of the Collection’s crown jewels: Thomas Cole’s The Arch of Nero from 1846.

This painting was the source of considerable controversy in 2021 when the Newark Museum of Art chose to deaccession the artwork and send it to auction. Newark was taking advantage of a COVID-era loosening of American Alliance of Museums rules requiring member institutions use any and all funds generated through the sale of artwork only for the acquisition of new items. Selling artwork and applying the money to operating expenses had always been strictly prohibited by AAM, but latitude was being given during COVID as museums were closed and revenues dried up.

In cases where institutions deaccession and sell items from their collection, a common practice, the great danger is beloved masterpieces long enjoyed by museum goers vanishing from public view into the third homes of modern-day robber barons. The DeMell Jacobsen Foundation saved the day, acquiring The Arch of Nero for $988,000. It was almost immediately put back on public view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

“My goal when I set up the foundation was to create a collection that will not only honor (my husband’s) legacy, but that will be a gift to America,” DeMell Jacobsen said. “I want Americans to know how great the art is.”

What’s in a Name?

DeMell Jackson visited art museums including The Met as a child and carried her interest in art over to adulthood, but her deep immersion into American art came only following her husband’s death. She actually has a Ph.D. in international affairs with a specialty in peace negotiations–the ending of civil wars and ethnic conflicts.

“I wanted to learn about how the world worked,” she said.

Her expertise in American art comes via self-study and visiting museums, galleries, fairs, auctions and the counsel of experts she’s met along the way including a pair of art history professors at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville.

Inadvertently, this unconventional path to connoisseurship has given her an advantage. She is not beholden to the canon and its rigid indoctrination into a narrow definition of American art: white, patriarchal, strictly descended from European masters and movements.

“I try to buy masterpieces, but not necessarily the most well-known artists because I want people to know the full depth and breadth of our artistic and cultural heritage,” DeMell Jacobsen explains.

While the Collection surely has its share of “well-known artists” from American art history–Cole, Henri, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Grant Wood, a knockout Loïs Maillou Jones Paris scene that will be spotlighted in an upcoming exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris–it’s in the mostly unknown figures where DeMell Jacobsen’s eye shines and the exhibition soars.

Bror Nordfeldt’s exhausted Summer Dusk (Solitude) from 1920, a moody-blue nocturne of a weary rider and burro trudging under a harvest moon through the mountains of northern New Mexico. American landscape painting gets no better. Period.

Robert Gwathmey’s 1955 Clearing. Sharecroppers cutting pine and splitting wood under a sun so oppressive it has turned the entire sky yellow. The scene could have come from north Florida. Linear. Spare. Feel the weight of the hammer overhead.

Irene Rice Pereira’s blocky, bold, textured, heavily impastoed Still Life of 1932. Another still life, Peinture/Nature Morte (1924) by Patrick Henry Bruce–vibrant, geometric, bursting with visual interest.

Walt Kuhn’s 1939 Lady in Vest, painted with every ounce of empathy for working people as Édouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergére.

Gold stars for anyone acquainted with these artists previously. Similar discoveries occur over and over and over again throughout “American Made.”

“People who come here are blown away, and it’s not just the famous people, it’s all of America and really ferreting out the great, great, great artists,” DeMell Jacobsen said.

An early lesson she continues carrying with her when buying new pieces is how artists became famous. In the 20^th century, that was largely through critics–mostly in New York–writing about them. They couldn’t write about everyone, everywhere, and these previously unknown masterpieces by previously unfamiliar artists are the one’s Jacobsen most relishes sharing.

“My definition (of a masterpiece) is, it’s not how detailed the painting is, how many objects are in it, it’s what it does to me. It takes your breath away,” DeMell Jacobsen said. “With a true masterpiece, you see more and more and have a greater reaction every time.”

When collecting, she’s looking for items from an artist’s best years in the style for which the artist is best known, and then, of course, “what kind of impact it has.” Condition, likewise, is critically important.

As are the frames. She and her team place extraordinary emphasis on appropriately framing their acquisitions. Her passion for discussing frames is as great as her passion for discussing the artworks–she makes no distinction between the two.

Transformative

“American Made” debuted at the Mint Museum in Charlotte and stopped at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis before arriving at the Cummer. After leaving here, it will travel to the San Antonio Museum of Art and the Huntsville Museum of Art in Alabama.

Since DeMell shares her treasures with museums shortly after purchase, she’s never seen this much of her handiwork together. Just like the public, the Mint presentation was the first time she had a comprehensive overview of what she’s been able to achieve with her collecting over the past two decades.

Taking it all in, what did she think?

“I think its transformative.”

NOTE: Visitors to the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens in Jacksonville from outside of Florida should be aware that the NAACP has issued a travel advisory for the state noting, and warning, that under its current governor, Ron DeSantis, Florida has “engaged in an all-out attack on Black Americans, accurate Black history, voting rights, members of the LGBTQ+ community, immigrants, women’s reproductive rights, and free speech, while simultaneously embracing a culture of fear, bullying, and intimidation by public officials.”

Sabrina Williams is grateful to both her grandmothers, whom she affectionately calls Kokum (Cree for grandmother). They not only taught her the beadwork and sewing that gives her a meaningful vocation, they instilled a love of tradition she passes along to her daughter today.

But the knowledge the Edmonton artisan learned didn’t come without a dark side, as her parents were residential school survivors who became disconnected from their people’s ways.

“My parents lost most of their Indigenous identities and traditions. They are now coming back to the red road of healing and reconnecting,” said Williams, whose roots are Cree, Tahltan and Tlingit. “I was so thankful they let me make such a beautiful connection with my kokums, who taught me what my parents lost.”

Sabrina and her daughter Shelby, 12, are members of the Indigenous Arts Market Collective (I.A.M. Collective), an Edmonton organization of First Nations, Métis and Inuit artists. Members not only offer locally made Indigenous art and handcrafted items, they embody a spirit of entrepreneurship while sharing their culture with the world.

“We started in 2018, to break down barriers that were preventing Indigenous artists from participating in Edmonton’s local markets,” said Lorrie Lawrence, I.A.M. executive director and a founding member.

“We want to get as many youths to work in these traditional arts as possible. The elders who carry on with these traditions, it’s important for us to make sure they’re heard by the youth.”

Williams was taught skills such as quilt making and ribbon skirts by her kokum at Muskeg Lake Cree Nation, and learned beadwork, sweetgrass weaving and traditional medicine from her kokum in northern Saskatchewan.

“She taught me since I was six. Thirty-three years later I’m still embracing my matriarchs, my kokums’ sacred knowledge. And I am proud I am able to teach my daughter,” said Williams about daughter Shelby, who got an eye for acrylic painting and drawing after learning beadwork at age eight.

“She created the design for our orange shirt which was inspired by her grandparents, who attended residential schools. She also created MMIW (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women) artwork, which was unfortunately inspired by the murder of my younger sister.”

Williams and Shelby now make a range of items, from quilts and handbags to Cree regalia and cedar hats, along with soaps, lotions and medicine oils using sage, sweetgrass and red cedar.

Frances Whitford, a Métis artisan and I.A.M. director, learned to work with moosehide and fur watching her Métis grandmother in Anzac, south of Fort McMurray. She recalls her grandfather’s trapline as a source of materials that were turned into mukluks and jackets.

“In our culture, you’re mainly taught by watching. All the things my grandmother would do, tanning hides, beadwork, the trapline; was part of my everyday life,” said Whitford.

Her brother and cousin have now stepped into their grandfather’s shoes, supplying furs and hide for her Beadwork & Bannock business, which was inspired by the family’s desire to preserve their Métis heritage.

“I didn’t realize I was taught something very special to my culture. It wasn’t until my grandmother passed away, that I realized it would be lost,” said Whitford.

A member of the Tataskweyak Cree Nation of northern Manitoba, I.A.M. director James Fox recalls wanting to connect to his Cree heritage, so in 2017, he joined Indigenous craft classes at the Edmonton library. From there it was beading lessons at the Native Friendship Centre, and his current Cree-ations now range from rawhide rattles and fish scale art to caribou hair tufting and leather crafts.

“When I started doing beadwork I wanted to keep the traditions, but I always add a modern twist,” said Fox. 

Creations by members of the collective are available at the Downtown Farmers Market in Edmonton, and at Fort Edmonton Park in the summer.

 “It’s very important to us, promoting authentic Indigenous arts,” Whitford said. “The number of beautiful artists is amazing.”

For more, visit https://iamcollective.ca/

JULY 2023:

MAY 29, 2023:

In less than two months, the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation will be ground zero for the 9th annual RedCan invitational graffiti jam, the first and only event of its kind in Indian Country. RedCan is scheduled for July 5-8, 2023, and is open to the public.

The Cheyenne River Youth Project announced the names of the 12 featured artists who will paint murals around the Eagle Butte community on July 5-6 and in CRYP’s public Waniyetu Wowapi (Winter Count) Art Park on July 7-8. The grassroots, Native- and woman-led nonprofit organization also unveiled a short film about the RedCan project titled “Changing the Narrative.”

“Five of our 2022 featured artists were Native women, and all five are returning this year,” said Julie Garreau, CRYP’s executive director. “We are excited to amplify their voices, perspectives and gifts through this little film, just as we are honored to welcome them back to Cheyenne River for four more days of creation, connection, cultural exchange, and the healing, transformative power of art.”

Those artists are 179, Lucious, Rezmo, TamiJoy and Yukue. Also part of the Redcan 2023 lineup are East, Cyfi, Hoka, Biafra, Wundr, Lawst and Desi Mundo.

During the four painting days, each artist will work closely with a CRYP Lakota Art Fellow or teen intern. These young Lakota art students will be able to learn new skills and practice new techniques as they assist the artists.

“This mentorship is a vital part of RedCan,” Garreau explained. “Not only does it bring Native and non-Native artists from across the country to our homelands, giving our community members a priceless opportunity to engage with the largest art movement in the history of humankind, it also gives our young people opportunities to explore their identities, share their voices and stories, and grow as artists.”

“I’m excited that even more teens are interested in participating in RedCan this year,” said Wakinyan Chief, CRYP’s art manager. “One of our programs assistant trainees completed several teen internships with us, and he’s heading into his third RedCan. Every couple of weeks, he tells me how much he’s looking forward to this summer’s event.”

Most of the featured artists have participated in multiple RedCans, as well; in fact, some have participated since the inaugural event in 2015. According to Garreau, that has deepened the RedCan experience in ways that she and her staff couldn’t have anticipated in the beginning.

“We’ve seen lifelong friendships develop, and the artists often refer to RedCan as a family,” she said. “That is profoundly moving to all of us at CRYP, because relationships lie at the heart of everything we do. And as we strengthen the bonds between us, we also see beautiful collaborative work develop — particularly between our guest artists, local Cheyenne River artists, and our young art students. It’s such an honor to witness this unfold year after year.”

While the artists paint in the community, CRYP and its volunteers will host youth arts, crafts and recreational activities at dedicated community sites. Then, when the artists move to the art park, the action moves with them.

“In the past, our two days in the art park have included DJ music, Lakota exhibition dancing, field day games, arts activities, hoop-dancing classes, and so much more,” said Jerica Widow, CRYP’s programs director. “It’s a joy to see the kids learning and having fun while family members and guests stroll through the park, enjoy the music and dancing, and watch the artists work.”

Community members also frequently gather at the mural sites in town, and not just the new ones. Garreau noted that, last year, CRYP staff witnessed people stopping at the older murals as well and discussing the details of the artwork with their companions.

“Our community really has embraced RedCan,” she reflected. “Throughout each year, as we drive or walk around town, we see all of this art — literally hundreds of murals since RedCan began — that uplifts us and reflects who we are as Lakota people. It is really powerful.

“For me, it’s a centering point,” she continued. “That’s so important, because the work we do here can be really challenging.”

On Friday and Saturday, July 7-8, CRYP will close each painting day in the art park with a free community meal and special performance on the Waniyetu Wowapi Art Park stage. Cheyenne River Lakota and Crow Creek Dakota rap artist, producer and sound designer Bazille will perform Friday night.

The Wake Singers, an Olgala Lakota rock band comprising cousins Douglas, Michael and Reed Two Bulls, will take the stage on Saturday. And, as always, the Cheyenne River-based Wakinyan Maza drum group will open and close each day of RedCan with a prayer, smudging and drum song for all who wish to participate.

In 2022, acclaimed hoop dancers The Sampson Brothers performed on RedCan’s final evening.
Photo credit Cheyenne River Youth Project.

Featured artists paint at mural sites in the community for RedCan’s first two days, then paint in the art park during the event’s final two days.
Photo credit Cheyenne River Youth Project.