Staff photo / Andy Gray From left, Medici Museum of Art Curator Alex Jesko and Executive Director Katelyn Amendolara-Russo confer while installing “From Oil to Art: A Rockefeller Legacy Rooted in Industry, Innovation and Imagination,” an exhibition opening Friday at the Howland Museum.

HOWLAND — John D. Rockefeller was born in New York, but his legacy as an industrialist and a philanthropist started in Ohio.

Medici Museum of Art will open an exhibition Friday that chronicles the Ohio roots of the man who founded Standard Oil Company and became the wealthiest man in the United States, as well as his family’s enduring commitment to culture and philanthropy.

“From Oil to Art: A Rockefeller Legacy Rooted in Industry, Innovation and Imagination” made its way to Medici, in part, through Executive Director Katelyn Amendolara-Russo’s connection with Carole A. Feuerman, the artist whose “Poseidon” sculpture is installed on the museum’s front lawn. Through Feuerman, she met Katy Sfara, an artist whose work also will be shown at Medici.

“Her husband is good friends with Steven Rockefeller (Jr.), and we were talking about elevating Medici and bringing something really significant here,” Amendolara-Russo said.

That led to a conversation with Rockefeller, the great-great-grandson of John D. Rockefeller and co-curator of the exhibition.

“I yearned to share the content with the citizenry in Ohio, given his longstanding place in Cleveland,” Steven Rockefeller said. “This was something I wished to do for quite a while now. A friend shared my website with Katelyn, and she examined it and felt that her community would be intrigued in looking back at this important history and the connection between Mr. Rockefeller, his family and the greater Ohio area.”

Some of the information was compiled in the 1980s for a presentation to the family on John D. Rockefeller’s history, he said. When the 150th anniversary of Standard Oil was approaching in 2019, Rockefeller began organizing the information into chronicles, large books filled with photos, letters, documents and other information. Each chronicle is devoted to a different topic, and Medici had access to dozens of them in preparing the exhibition.

“It just occurred to me one after the other that this particular topic needed to be covered, so I made yet another book,” he said. “It did amaze me how many could be easily fashioned from his history.”

The exhibition is filled with historical artifacts. One of the first things visitors will see are beams from the house where John D. Rockefeller was born in 1937 in Richford, New York. There are business directories that belonged to the one-time bookkeeper, an oil drill, maps and commissioned art that documents the family and Standard Oil.

It also includes the art of Anne-Marie Rasmussen Rockefeller, Steven Rockefeller Jr.’s mother, a former maid for the Rockefeller family who married Steven Rockefeller Sr., the son of New York Gov. and Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. It led to her being referred to as America’s Cinderella.

Steven Rockefeller Jr.’s art is represented with striking B&W photographs of Nelson Rockefeller’s estate and sculpture garden, Kykuit. Rockefeller’s photos also incorporate his study of calligraphy with Chinese master Fo Tao.

“I brought lots of items from which Katelyn could select,” he said. “There’s a curatorial element to all of this. I’m not a professional at that, and I had to leave it to the professionals, and I’m glad I did. My wife and I feel, from what we’ve seen, it’s a beautiful presentation.”

Rockefeller and his wife, Kimberly, will attend both a private reception for donors on Thursday and the public opening reception 5 to 8 p.m. Friday. Friday’s reception also will serve as the opening event for Sfara’s exhibition, “The Light of Tomorrow,” and artists from several countries who participated in the exhibition “ZODIAC: The Mysterious Power of the Creative” also will be in attendance.