Avant Garde: Remarkable Women in the Permanent Collection
February 26, 2026 – April 4, 2027
The Tampa Museum of Art’s permanent collection of art continues to grow at a feverish pace. Many recent acquisitions highlight art made by women who are celebrated both nationally and locally for their creative achievements. The exhibition Avant Garde: Remarkable Women in the Permanent Collection features recent additions to the collection with works by Selina Román, Ya La’Ford, Nneka Jones, Wendy Babcox, and Lorraine Genovar—all artists with roots in the Tampa Bay area. Avant Garde also features artists new to the museum’s holdings including Tau Lewis, Mika Rottenberg, Hannah van Bart, Kirsten Hassenfeld, and Quisqueya Henriquez alongside artists such as Alma Thomas, Niki de Saint Phalle, Marisol, Mernet Larsen, and Elisabeth Condon. Viewed together, Avant Garde: Remarkable Women in Permanent Collection will highlight the artists’ explorations of home, self, history, and womanhood through figuration and abstraction.
Here and Now: Selections from the Contemporary Collection
On view through January 31, 2027
Here and Now: Selections from the Contemporary Collection highlights key holdings and new acquisitions of contemporary art in the Tampa Museum of Art’s permanent collection. With a focus on art of the moment or art of our time, Here and Now nods to the collecting history of the Museum, as well as the significance of the present—the materials, narratives, and events informing contemporary art making. As the works in this gallery demonstrate, contemporary artists portray life around them from the vantage point of observer, inquisitor, cartographer, or cultural historian. Moreover, the works on view often blur the boundaries of traditional media—for example paintings may be emphasized by sculptural or photographic materials; the ready-made or found object serves as the source of inspiration; or an assortment of various images creates a whole picture.
Jun Kaneko: Silence Before Sound
On view through August 23, 2026
The exhibition Jun Kaneko: Silence Before Sound celebrates the Tampa Museum of Art’s recent acquisition of Jun Kaneko’s (Japanese-American, b. 1942) monumental sculpture Untitled (Dango). Jun Kaneko: Silence Before Sound represents the first major exhibition of Kaneko’s oeuvre in Florida and will present an overview of the artist’s prolific career—from the early sculptures he made as a member of the influential California Clay Movement in the 1960s to the groundbreaking projects that blurred the boundaries of painting, ceramics, and sculpture. The title Jun Kaneko: Silence Before Sound, serves as a metaphor for the artist’s creative process and the Japanese concept of Ma, an idea defined as a pause in time. Each application of glaze and paint is carefully considered with the appropriate space between the mark or gesture. This negative space, or silence, is equally important to the overall balance, harmony, and pattern in Kaneko’s artworks. TMA’s new acquisition of Kaneko’s Dango will anchor the exhibition.
to leave a trace, 2024. Vintage saris, fabric, seagrass, 20 ft. long panels: grass: 59 x 60 in. saris and fabric: 80 x 59 in. Courtesy of the artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles.
Suchitra Mattai: To Leave a Trace
On view through May 2027
On May 5, 1883, two ships left India with indentured laborers and headed to the shores of Guyana, a British colony on the east coast of South America. Over an 80-year period, from 1883–1917, the British Empire transported 250,000 Indian men, women, and children to work on Guyana’s sugar plantations. Sugar, especially crops from Guyana, produced trade riches for the Crown and received the nickname “White Gold.” The sugar trade resulted in generations of Indian migrants settling new homes in the Caribbean. Despite adverse treatment and challenging living conditions, they established cultural traditions in their new tropical environment. Suchitra Mattai’s artwork to leave a trace evokes the complex history of migration that transformed the lives of her family and thousands of others.
Ships and the sea appear in several of Mattai’s artworks as explorations of self and community. She uses materials familiar to her—such as vintage saris, bindis and beading, and Hindu relics—to reclaim history and give prominence to voices silenced or ignored throughout time. The artist’s monumental installation to leave a trace (2024) re-envisions the Trans-Atlantic journey from India to Guyana. Mattai represents the ship’s hull with an elongated post wrapped in braided gold rope. The sails, comprised of vibrant saris and seagrass, serve as stand-ins for the female figure and land. Each sari sail features a dark and light side, a nod to the dual identities inherent to the Indo-Caribbean population, especially women. Mattai protects the ship with mastheads of the Roman goddess Diana and the Hindu deity Devi to protect and provide safe passage for the travelers.
Charles Atlas: Kiss the Day Goodbye
On view
A pioneer of film and video art, Charles Atlas (American, b. 1949) is known for capturing experimental dance and performance on camera, particularly the choreography of his longtime collaborator Merce Cunningham. In 2015, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation invited Atlas to participate in its inaugural artist-in-residence program on Captiva Island, Florida. During the residency, Atlas continued his exploration of time-based art with the Gulf of Mexico as his inspiration. He made a suite of video installations entitled The Tyranny of Consciousness, which includes Kiss the Day Goodbye.
Focal Point: The David Hall Photography Collection
On view through April 19, 2026
The Tampa Museum of Art is the proud recipient of the David Hall Collection. A prolific collector of photographs, Hall became enamored with photography during childhood and later shared his passion with the Tampa community as one of the founding members of the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts (FMoPA). He collected 20th-century masters such as Berenice Abbott, Eugène Atget, and Edward Weston, and specialized in photography between World War I and World War II. An avid photographer himself, Hall collected works by contemporary photographers including Judy Dater and Robert Hartman. Focal Point: The David Hall Photography Collection takes an intimate look at the collector’s eye and traces major developments in 20th-century photography.
Terracotta sculpture; Caere (?), Etruria, Italy; Archaic period, ca. 525-500 ʙᴄᴇ
TAMPA MUSEUM OF ART, BEQUEST FROM THE ESTATE OF DR. RICHARD E. AND MRS. MARY B. PERRY, 2022.011
Photography by Philip LaDeau
The Etruscans: A Mysterious Italian People
On view through May 23, 2027
The Etruscans are a fascinating ancient Italian people about whom much remains a mystery. They inhabited an area of central Italy – present-day Tuscany and beyond – immediately north of Latium where the city Rome later rose to power. Emerging from the Iron Age “Villanovan” culture (ca. 900-700 ʙᴄᴇ), the Etruscans reached their zenith in the second quarter of the first millennium ʙᴄᴇ. Over the centuries, Etruscan art and culture retained its distinct identity. Yet, they were variously influenced by Celtic and Central European, Roman and Greek, Punic and Phoenician civilizations. The Etruscans were gradually subsumed by Rome over the course of a long process of acculturation (ca. 5th-1st cent. ʙᴄᴇ).
The permanent antiquities collection of the Tampa Museum of Art holds some 70 Etruscan objects covering a period of about 750 years (ca. 9th-1st cent. ʙᴄᴇ). This ensemble, the largest public collection of its kinds in the southeastern United States, has never been displayed together before. Comprising jewelry and cosmetics, bronze statuettes and metalware, terracotta figurines and earthenware, including cinerary urns, these objects illustrate aspects of everyday life and death, pottery production, myth and religion. The presentation of the Etruscan Collection is part of a series of long-term exhibitions highlighting the Museum’s permanent collection.
Myrlande Constant: Early Works
Sequin Arts: The Flagmakers of Haiti
On view now
Myrlande Constant: Early Works is the third presentation in the series Sequin Arts: The Flagmakers of Haiti. It features an intimate selection of Constant’s flags made over a fifteen-year period, from the mid-1990s to the end of the aughts. The textiles on view include works from the Heller Collection, who gifted the first Haitian objects to the Museum’s permanent collection, as well as the Gessen Collection, recognized as one of the largest collections of drapo Vodou in the country. The eight beaded works reveal the evolution of Constant’s early work, from singular imagery Vodou deities to narrative tableaux depicting both spiritual and everyday life in Haiti. This presentation also includes two flags by Mireille Delice, one of the many artists Constant mentored in her atelier. Viewed together, Myrlande Constant: Early Works offers insight into the transformative years of Constant’s creative practice, as she emerged from local heroine to global phenom.
Hybrid of a Chrysler, 2016
Vintage automobile and mixed media installation
Collection of Susie and Mitchell Rice
Esterio Segura: Hybrid of a Chrysler
On view now
Esterio Segura highlights the complexity of everyday life in Cuba in artworks exploring the socio-political, cultural, and spiritual landscape of the island nation. Different manifestations of winged animals and machines, airplanes, and submarines appear in his art and represent themes of freedom, isolation, immigration, desire, and exile. Hybrid of a Chrysler, features Segura’s signature use of wings attached to the roof of a 1953 Chrysler Windsor. The car, like the classic autos used daily in Cuba, appears ready for flight. Hybrid of a Chrysler premiered at the Tampa Museum of Art in 2016 and has traveled across the globe to Venice, Italy and Washington DC, to Gainesville, Florida, and has now returned to Tampa.
Portrait by Yousuf Karsh (Armenian-Canadian, 1908-2002). Black-figure Attic pseudo-Panathenaic amphora, Athens, ca. 540 BCE. Tampa Museum of Art, Joseph Veach Collection, Museum Purchase, 1986.024
Joseph Veach Noble: Through the Eye of a Collector
On view now
In 1986, the Tampa Museum of Art acquired some 175 ancient objects from the eminent collection of Joseph Veach Noble (1920-2007). This acquisition became the cornerstone of the museum’s burgeoning permanent collection of antiquities that has since grown to about 875 objects (and counting). After nearly four decades, it is high time to place the Noble collection in the spotlight once more.
The superb Noble collection of Greek and Italian vases is of international renown for its breadth of themes and styles, forms and techniques. The Noble vases are therefore of superior educational value to illuminate aspects of ancient Greek myth and religion, warfare and athletics, wine culture and cosmetics, daily life and entertainment. Many vases of Noble’s collection have been on display in the past decades, but no dedicated presentation of the collection has been on view since the inaugural exhibition at the TMA in 1986. The two-year exhibition Through the Eye of a Collector will also showcase fascinating curiosities and beautiful sculptures in the TMA’s Noble Collection.
Vaughn Spann: Allegories
On view now
Abstraction and figuration converge in Vaughn Spann’s monumental paintings. Marked Men, an ongoing series, features a prominent X at the center of the canvas. Rendered in vibrant paint swaths—from sapphire to sky blue, crimson red and marigold yellow, to blush pink and emerald green—the X creates grids of kaleidoscopic colors. A stand-in for the body, unknown, or the anonymous, Spann’s X signifies both individual and collective experiences. The suite of four large-scale paintings on view demonstrates Spann’s exploration of personal, political, and art historical narratives.
C. Paul Jennewein: Classical Inspiration
On view now
C. Paul Jennewein’s (German-American, 1890-1978) artwork reveals the inspiration of the ancient world while also engaging with the new sculptural styles of his time, merging Art Deco with the neo-classical tradition. In 1978, the Tampa Bay Art Center, predecessor of the Tampa Museum of Art, received a bequest of 2,600 objects including finished artworks, as well as preparatory drawings, plaster casts, and molds for the numerous commissions Jennewein received during his prolific career. Starting in Fall 2022, the Museum will present Jennewein’s early sculptures for an extended two-year display.
Esterio Segura: Goodbye My Love
On view now
A new acquisition to the Museum’s permanent collection, Goodbye My Love represents Esterio Segura’s (Cuban, b. 1970) ongoing exploration of the meaning of airplanes and flight. Produced in multiple editions at different scales, this version is nearly the largest. In describing the series, Segura explained, “In this work, the reference to the airplane hybridizes with a reference to another well-known universal symbol: a simplified image of the heart…With this work, I reference the experience of uprooting, nostalgia, memory, loss—how we experience the breakdown of everything we love.”
attended by four figures on grave.
Monumental funerary vessel (red-figure volute krater with added red and white); Apulia, Italy; early Hellenistic period, ca. 330 320 BCE. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. William Knight Zewadski, 1986.225.
Life & Death in the Ancient World
Introduction to the Antiquities Collection
On view now
The Tampa Museum of Art purchased its first ancient artwork in 1981, a black-figure column krater, perhaps depicting the wedding procession of Peleus and Thetis. Five years later, the Museum’s antiquities collection quadrupled in size with the single acquisition of the prominent collection of Joseph Veach Noble. The permanent collection currently holds about 575 ancient artifacts, in addition to over 100 long-term loans from private collections. More than three-quarters of the Museum’s antiquities are representative of ancient Greece and Italy, particularly Athens and Rome. The ancient world encompassed a much wider diversity of traditions, however, of which some can be encountered in this introduction to the Museum’s Antiquities Collection. The gallery display will highlight aspects of daily life and death, as well as human and animal figures, beauty ideals and eroticism, athletics and theater, wine consumption and vase production, religion and mythology, trade and politics.
Life & Death in the Ancient World is one of several new exhibitions dedicated to the Museum’s permanent collection that will be on view for long-term displays over the next five years.
Purvis Young: Redux
On view now
Inspired by the success of the exhibition Purvis Young: 91 in 2019, the Tampa Museum of Art will remount its Purvis Young collection as one of the first of several long-term displays of the permanent collection. In 2004, the Rubell Family Foundation gifted 91 artworks to the Tampa Museum of Art by Young (American, 1943-2010). Based in the Overtown neighborhood of Miami, Florida, Young’s paintings reflect his observations of daily life and the fight for social justice, hope for his community, immigration and otherness, as well as the fragile balance between life and death. He rendered his work from found objects—items he discovered in his neighborhood. Discarded wood, windows, furniture fragments, cabinets, doors, carpet, fabric, string, and cables. Although his means were limited, Young was recognized throughout Miami, and now across the globe, for his remarkable painting practice and his contributions to the cultural landscape of South Florida.
Jacob Hashimoto: This Particle of Dust
On view now through 2025
The Tampa Museum of Art’s atrium is transformed by Jacob Hashimoto’s site-specific installation This Particle of Dust. Hundreds of white and navy blue kite-like disks is suspended from the Museum’s ceiling. Installed at various heights, viewers will experience Hashimoto’s sculptural installation at different vantage points from the lobby to the 2nd floor galleries.
© Jaume Plensa. Courtesy Galerie Lelong, New York.
Laura with Bun
On view now
Jaume Plensa is an internationally acclaimed artist who has exhibited his sculptures in museums all over the world. In locations as diverse as Seoul, Paris, Chicago, Bordeaux and London, Plensa’s monumental sculptures have reaffirmed the power of art to transform a public space into a community.
14th Congressional and Next Generation High School Art Competition 2026
On view now through April 12, 2026
This annual high school art exhibition features exemplary work created by high school students throughout the 14th Congressional District and Hillsborough County. Students compete for two top prizes: the Museum Choice Award and the Congressional Choice Award. The artwork selected for the Congressional Choice Award will continue to represent the district in the National Congressional High School Art Competition, hanging in the Cannon Tunnel of the U.S. Capitol for one year. The 14th Congressional District and Next Generation High School Art Competition is presented in partnership with the Office of U.S. Representative, Kathy Castor.
Young at Art K-8 Exhibition 2026
On view now through April 12, 2026
Each year the Tampa Museum of Art invites Hillsborough County art teachers to submit a student’s artwork for the Young at Art Student Exhibition. The Museum celebrates the creativity of this year’s submissions from students in kindergarten through eighth grade. We would also like to acknowledge the dedication and support of the visual arts by the educators, school staff and administration, and the families and friends of the artists. 100+ student artworks from private and public schools will be on view in the Education Center hallway.