The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens has announced that it is a recipient of the 2026 Southeastern Museums Conference Bronze Award in the Under $10,000 budget category for the exhibition “Touring the Landscape: Art, Travel, and the Shaping of American Identity.”
The SEMC Exhibition Competition showcases the best in the profession and provides benchmarks for regional exhibition efforts in Southeastern museums.
Organized by the Cummer Museum and guest-curated by students at the University of North Florida, this exhibition examines how late 19th and early 20th century artists used landscape painting and tourism to explore American identity at home and abroad.
As part of the Hicks Honors College class Public Narratives: Museum Curation and Interpretation, taught by Assistant Director of the Hicks Honors College Dr. Meg McCrummen Fowler, students were challenged to create an exhibition for the Cummer Museum that showcased works from the museum’s permanent collection in new ways.
The result is an insightful exhibition that explores the connection between people and place and how the shared visual experience of landscape shaped the American imagination amid a rapidly-changing century.
The exhibition is on view at the Cummer Museum through Nov. 29.
“The chance to guest curate such an exhibition is a rare opportunity for undergraduates, and this sort of experiential learning and undergraduate research is extraordinary preparation for their careers,” said Fowler. “I’m especially grateful for the Cummer Museum’s enthusiastic partnership that created such an outstanding experience for our UNF students.”
Holly Keris, the Cummer Museum’s J. Wayne & Delores Barr Weaver Chief Curator, explained, “While these paintings by Jasper Cropsey, Martin Johnson Heade, Winslow Homer and others are among the most recognizable in our collection, the students’ research provides an opportunity to see these familiar favorites through a new lens.”
For many visitors, exhibitions are the public face of museums, and effective planning, management of resources, research and interpretation, collections care, public programs, publications and fundraising all contribute to the fulfillment of a museum's mission.
Expectations and standards were exceptionally high for this year’s applicants. The SEMC Exhibition Competition received a record-breaking number of applications from a wide variety of museums across the Southeast.
The Exhibition Competition recognizes exhibitions for overall excellence or for stretching the limits of content and design through innovation. Winning entries were well-designed exhibitions of merit with educational value and demonstrated respectful treatment of objects. Recipients of the awards were judged by an appointed jury of museum professionals across the region who specialize in curatorial studies and exhibition design.
Award winners were recognized at the 2026 Annual Meeting Awards Luncheon on Wednesday, Sept. 30, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and will be included in the Winter 2026 Edition of INSIDE SEMC, a digital publication of the Southeastern Museums Conference. This designation recognizes the Cummer Museum’s contribution to professional standards in Southeastern museums.
