It was founded in 1961 after the death of Ninah Cummer, who bequeathed her gardens and personal art collection to the new museum.

The permanent collection of the museum includes over 5,000 works of art dating from 2100 BCE to the twenty-first century.

The museum's collection is especially strong in European and American paintings and also includes substantial holdings of Meissen porcelain.

[6] In 1906, on their honeymoon, Ninah and Arthur Cummer purchased their first piece of art, a painting titled Along the Strand directly from the artist, Paul King.

Ninah Cummer then hired landscape architect Ellen Biddle Shipman to create the Italian Garden on her and Arthur's land.

Clara and Waldo's property was sold and now houses the Northeast Florida chapter of the American Red Cross and the Cummer's education center, Art Connections.

[9] It featured an Art Deco façade and an inner courtyard that was paved with the terra cotta tiles of the Cummers' old roof.

[10] The museum's first opening was attended by one thousand guests, including Jacksonville mayor W. Haydon Burns and Florida governor Farris Bryant.

[10] In 1971, ten years after the museum's opening, the Cummer celebrated the addition of a new wing for 17th-century art.

[19] The permanent collection spans from 2100 BCE through the 21st century and includes pieces created by Peter Paul Rubens, Winslow Homer, Thomas Moran, Norman Rockwell, and Romare Bearden.

Janet Scudder's Running Boy is on display in the courtyard, and Riis Burwell's Entropy Series #26 sits above the Italian Garden.

Diana of the Chase, by American artist Anna Hyatt Huntington, is located in the upper tier of the gardens.

Many of the original trees on the property were felled in order to make room for flower beds, but those that remained grew up to 150 feet in size.

[11] The first gardens on the Cummer property were designed by Ossian Cole Simonds in 1903, just after the adjoining house was completed.

Sections of Clara and Waldo's garden were designed by William Lyman Phillips, a partner in the Olmstead Brothers firm.

[11] The Cummer Gardens were selected for the National Register of Historic Places because they represent the history of American landscape design in the first four decades of the twentieth century.

It has a focal point at the end of the garden in the form of a marble fountain surrounded by an arched gloriette.

[34] In 2002, the focal fountain, made of Verona aggregate that had deteriorated over time, was replaced with an exact reproduction of Botticino marble, sculpted by Nicola Stagetti in Pietrasanta, Italy.

It features numerous varieties of flowers and trees, a curved staircase, portico, and three garden rooms.

[34] After the property was sold in 1960, the garden fell into disrepair, but with the purchase of the Barnett building, plans were made to restore it using historical photographs.

[39] The 1992 expansion of the museum made space for a new education center named Art Connections.

Most of the work went into installing new, high-tech activities, including a virtual canvas powered by a laser-light paintbrush and a room that turns dancers' shadows into art on the wall.

[44] The Weaver Academy of Art at The Cummer Museum was created in 2007 for underserved elementary school-aged children.

These are The Chef's Canvas Cookbook (2016) and A Legacy in Bloom: Celebrating a Century of Gardens at the Cummer (2008), both of which have been previously available for purchase at the museum's shop.