The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens opened its first horticultural exhibition, “Flamboyance! A Topiary Menagerie,” on April 1. The exhibition features 50 topiary flamingos situated throughout the museum’s historically significant gardens located on the St. Johns River.
The exhibition will be on view until June 25.
“Flamboyance” is the collective noun for a gathering of flamingos, providing inspiration for the title of this extraordinary spectacle. The sculptural flamingo topiaries will be posed in groups and punctuated by colorful, bold tropical plants — a fun juxtaposition to the otherwise formal geometry of the Cummer Gardens.
The exhibition is a playful riff on the plastic pink flamingo, a classic Floridian garden motif, and it will invite visitors to enjoy the riverfront gardens through a refreshing new lens of color and creativity. Each of the nearly five-foot-tall topiary sculptures have been named by “adoptive parents,” or “Flockstars,” as the museum playfully refers to them, revealing each flamingo’s unique personality.
As the museum’s first horticulture exhibition, “Flamboyance!” elevates its gardens and places the Cummer Museum squarely in conversation with botanical garden peers.
“With its focus on the fantastic, fun and the unexpected, this exhibition promises to delight visitors and marks a new era of outdoor programming for the museum,” said Andrea Barnwell Brownlee, the George W. & Kathleen I. Gibbs director and chief executive officer of the museum.
Preparations for the exhibition started months in advance. In the late fall, museum horticulturists, led by Patrick MacRae, the Doolittle Family director of gardens and horticulture, constructed a purpose-built structure behind the scenes on the museum campus to house and protect the topiaries from the threat of frost.
The flamingos arrived in late January on loan from the Franklin Park Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in Columbus, Ohio. Within days of their arrival in Florida, the museum horticulture team and a group of 12 volunteers from the Late Bloomers Garden Club had planted each topiary with wax begonias, which flower a perfect shade of flamingo-pink.
“The museum is well-known for extraordinary exhibitions in our galleries, and this is an opportunity to expand the dynamism of the Cummer experience into our beautiful gardens,” said MacRae. “‘Flamboyance!’ is all about experiencing gardens with a sense of humor. Gardens are tremendous sources of joy — what better way to experience unbridled happiness than through a fabulous, and flamboyant, exhibition?”
The ancient art of topiary — the artful pruning and shaping of plants into decorative shapes — dates to the first century.
The fantastical style of topiary on display in “Flamboyance!” was pioneered by the Walt Disney Company in the 1960s, when the company began using steel mesh frames wrapped over metal support structures in the shapes of animals, including Disney characters. The steel mesh structures are planted with fast-growing plants that can achieve the desired effect in far less time than traditional topiary art.
The museum relies on support from individuals, corporations and foundations in order to realize its unique mission and serve as a vibrant cultural resource. Support is provided by lead sponsor Joan and Preston Haskell; celebrated sponsor Munz Family Holdings; tourism sponsor Visit Jacksonville; program partners First Horizon Bank, Hair Peace, Jacksonville Environmental Protection Board, Teresa Radzinski; exhibition season presenters City of Jacksonville, Cultural Council of Greater Jacksonville, Ronald and Karen Rettner; exhibition lead sponsors State of Florida, The Robert D. Davis Family Endowment, The Schultz Family Endowment; exhibition sponsors Director’s Circle Donors at the Cummer Museum and The Winston Family Foundation.
For further information about the museum, including hours, go to cummermuseum.org.
