Taking Care: Images of Devotion and Caregiving within The Johnson Collection

This exhibition showcases the visual, historical, and cultural complexities of caregiving in the American South. In an array of twenty-one diverse images, The Johnson Collection explores the multilayered themes of devotion and support in the contexts of parental nurturing, intergenerational caregiving, domestic labor and social services, divine love, and within the animal kingdom. Through engaging with the works of art on display, we observe how the caregivers shield and safeguard the vulnerable in both physical and emotional ways, and how caring and being cared for often blur roles.

Works such as Ray Goodbred’s Soc. Sec. Conference and Arthur Rose’s The Facts of Life invite us to reconsider what sort of value and recognition caregiving is afforded in society. Other pieces, such as Gladys Nelson Smith’s Promise of the Flower Stand or Rosina Sherwood’s Forsyth Park challenge our preconceived notions of who gives and who receives care, from whom, and why. Throughout the exhibition, the diversity of caregiving is celebrated along with the many spiritual, emotional, and economic benefits and complications pertaining to care.

Taking Care is curated by Danelle Bernten, Art History PhD candidate at Florida State University and The Johnson Collection’s 2025 Graduate Fellow.