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Published: January 13th 2012
Contemporary Art Museum of Jacksonville
Sculpture outside the Contemporary Art Museum of JacksonvilleContemporary Art Museum of Jacksonville
My first target today was the
Contemporary Art Museum of Jacksonville.
Some people consider it a miracle that this museum exists.
Jacksonville is very conservative culturally, so edgy contemporary art is a hard sell.
Somehow, it works.
The museum is located in an old office building downtown.
The building has been renovated to create soaring spaces with white walls and plenty of natural light.
Calling the museum “Contemporary” is a bit of a misnomer.
It has a permanent collection of modern art that dates back to at least the 1960s.
Only a small selection is on view.
It is organized thematically.
Some of the themes worked better than others.
One wall, for example, contained “geometric form”, which is a collection of abstract art that has nothing in common other than the fact that it is abstract.
A selection of protest art worked better.
One unusual room held a series of lithographs that
Pablo Picasso (see
The Fountain of Creativity) made a mere three years before his death.
They are filled with jagged, distorted forms and heavy use of color, like most late Picassos.
Jacksonville Riverfront Southeast
The Jacksonville Riverfront on the St. John's River, looking southeat from Jacksonville Landing Surprising for Jacksonville (or any southern museum, for that matter), there were no warnings in any room about the obvious sexual content of some works.
About half the floor space was reserved for
temporary shows.
There was only one on display when I visited, a show about chair design.
The show’s thesis is that chairs are often ignored in design discussions because they are seen as a utilitarian object.
In reality, it takes almost as much skill to design a good chair as any other object.
To push the point, they had chairs from such leading architects as
Frank Gehry and
Eero Saarinen.
One thing that seeped through throughout is that the show wants to be taken seriously, and the museum wants to be taken seriously for deciding to show it.
This is usually a sign of a high risk of finding just the opposite, a risk not decreased by the photos of major donors seated in some of the chairs in return for supporting the show.
It’s not the worst temporary show I’ve ever seen, but it’s far from the best.
Jacksonville Riverfront
After the museum, I spent
Jacksonville Riverfront, looking southwest
Jacksonville Riverfront on the St. John's River, looking southwest from Jacksonville Landing some time on the Jacksonville riverfront.
Jacksonville was founded on the St. John’s River, and the view of the river from the city (and vice versa) is one of the area’s great scenic assets.
If nothing else, the view appears in every
Jaguars broadcast, including the year they hosted the Super Bowl.
It’s better in person.
The river is over a thousand feet wide, with soaring bridges at periodic intervals.
The buildings surrounding it on both shores glisten in the sun.
The rest of downtown, it’s worth pointing out, was absolutely dead.
Nothing happens in Jacksonville on a Sunday.
After the museum, I needed supplies, and this meant an encounter with Florida at its second worst.
The southeast in general has a major sprawl problem, and Florida has it
more than most.
The trip to the stores I needed passed an unending stream of tract housing, condo developments, office parks, and strip malls.
The area looked like LeCorbusier’s dream of the future turned into a nightmare.
On the edge of all this, the forest is being cut down for more (the real estate bust slowed this down,
Jacksonville Landing Fountain
Dyed green for St. Patrick's Day but did not stop it).
I finally managed to find what I needed, and could get on the road.
Krispy Kreme
On the way out, I had food at another southeastern institution.
Krispy Kreme Donuts has a
fanatical following that few chains can match.
Their stock in trade is a sweet sugary icing that is applied to every donut type possible.
The donut machine is located behind the counter, so one can watch donuts being made while eating them.
The chain expanded widely in the early 2000s, but then went bankrupt due to management problems.
Stores are now pretty hard to find, so I’m glad I found this one.
After eating there, I believe there is another reason for their issues: while the icing was as good as people rave about, the donuts it is on are as boring as one can imagine.
They are far worse that
Dunkin Donuts, and even worse than those at 7-11.
After the donuts, it was time to drive.
Due to Florida’s geography, the fastest way to Tampa was on a local road.
This “local road” was actually a multilane highway, and
Lake Luchilla Boat Launch
Oak tree shrouded parking area at the Lake Luchilla Boat Launch, north of Hawthorne Florida (yes, that is my convertible in the middle of the photo). people drove it almost as fast as the Interstates.
Along the way I passed a souvenir shop from the old days of Florida tourism, crammed with everything imaginable and a sign that hasn’t been painted in decades.
Sadly, it wasn’t open.
After this came an unexpected battleground.
Waldo is a town in north central Florida along the highway (giving the answer to the common question “
Where’s Waldo? ” 😊 )
The residents of Waldo really don’t like commuters blazing through at high speeds.
They erected a large sign at the town limits asking people to slow down.
To ensure people obey it, they also funded a rather large police force.
Someone else then erected another sign just outside town limits declaring the entire area to be
one large speed trap.
I got through unscathed.
Lake Luchilla
The final item of note today was Lake Luchilla.
This lake is located next to the highway on the west side.
I passed it near sunset.
Florida sunsets in general are pretty; the sunset over the lake was spectacular.
I had trouble focusing on the road.
Thankfully,
Sunset over Lake Luchilla
A beautiful Florida sunset over Lake Luchilla, outside Hawthorne. I took the photo from the boat ramp. there was a public boat ramp where I could pull over and take photos to my heart’s content.
The boat ramp itself was pretty nice, surrounded by oak trees with hanging Spanish moss.
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