Christmas came early at the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville.
Maria Cox, a trustee of the institution for 12 years, donated The Donald and Maria Cox Collection, art that she and her late husband began acquiring in the 1970s when they lived in New York City.
The donation is an acceleration of a planned bequest that began with the couple’s gift of 48 works in 2004.
The current gift of 50 pieces is valued at $5.8 million and nearly triples the monetary value of the museum’s permanent collection.
Highlights of the latest donation include Joan Mitchell’s 1986 painting, “Chord III,” two paintings by Philip Guston, a bronze sculpture by Joel Shapiro and Keith Haring’s “Two Dancing Figures” sculpture.
The Cox collection comprises 16 paintings, 27 sculptures, 52 works on paper, one photograph and two pieces of ephemera — collectible memorabilia associated with an artist or his or her work.
In addition to the aforementioned artists, the entire collection includes work by Frank Stella, Jasper Johns and Malcolm Morley.
Sixty artists in the collection previously were unrepresented in the museum’s permanent inventory.
Cox also established the Donald and Maria Cox Fund by pledging a gift to support research, conservation, access and growth of the museum’s collection, said Ben Thompson, acting director.
Maria Cox, in a news release, said she and her late husband would sometimes visit 28 galleries on a Saturday while in New York, including in uptown, midtown, SoHo and Tribeca.
“Don and I mostly agreed on selections,” she said. “If we didn’t agree, we didn’t buy it.”
The donated works are diverse in style and media and reflect the Coxes’ taste as they purchased the art over the years.
“They went to galleries and exhibits and met the artists,” Thompson said. “They weren’t people who would utilize a consultant. They purchased what interested them and what spoke to them.”
Donald Cox, who died in 2006, was an executive with Exxon and a trustee and president of the American Federation of Arts.
Maria Cox was a landscape and interior designer who worked on the Opera House and Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City. She graduated from Cornell University.
P. Scott Brown, a University of North Florida associate professor of art history, will work with his fall methods class to catalog the Cox collection.
Students will research the objects and write essays that will be published on MOCA’s blog and used in materials at the museum.
Charles Gilman III, chair of the museum’s board of trustees, said in the news release the Coxes could have made their donations to “a more established and well-known institution in New York City where they built their careers.”
But, he said of the couple’s gift to MOCA, “Their choice indicates to me what really drove their collection from the very beginning — simply the love of art.”
The collection will be unveiled to the public Sept. 24 when the “Breaking Ground: The Donald and Maria Cox Collection” exhibition will open in the Permanent Collection Gallery at MOCA.
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