Category: Exhibitions

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 Tao 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.

Avant Garde: Remarkable Women in the Permanent Collection celebrates the growing presence and impact of women artists in the Tampa Museum of Art’s collection. Over time, museums across the country have worked to better represent women in their collections. However, there is still progress to be made. This exhibition highlights the Museum’s continued effort to collect, support, and share the work of women artists from many backgrounds and experiences.

The exhibition brings together artists from across generations and around the world. It includes both well-known figures and artists with strong ties to the Tampa Bay area. Together, their work explores important ideas about identity, history, creativity, and daily life.

The exhibition is organized into seven sections, each offering a different way to experience the work.

In Our Bodies, Ourselves, artists explore how women see themselves and how others see them. Some works show strength and joy, while others challenge ideas about beauty and identity. These works reflect changing views of womanhood over time.

Florida! focuses on the landscapes and natural beauty of our region. Artists capture familiar scenes such as coastlines, plants, and everyday life in Florida. At the same time, many of these works remind us of the importance of protecting our environment.

In Abstraction and Gesture, artists use color, shape, and movement to express ideas and emotions. These works may not show clear images, but they invite viewers to reflect on space, memory, and imagination.

Artist to Artist highlights how artists learn from and respond to those who came before them. Some works are inspired by art history, while others reimagine older styles in new and creative ways.

The section called Home looks at the idea of home in many forms. For some artists, home is a place of comfort. For others, it can reflect history, responsibility, or personal experience.

In Mythologies, artists draw from stories, memories, and cultural traditions. These works often blend imagination with real life, exploring themes of identity and belonging.

Across all sections, the artists in Avant Garde show courage, creativity, and a willingness to explore new ideas. Many balance multiple roles in their lives as artists, leaders, and members of their communities.

Featured Artists: Wendy Babcox, Hannah van Bart, Akea Brionne, Elisabeth Condon, Jane Corrigan, Elena del Rivero, Janet Echelman, Carole Feuerman, Lorraine Genovar, Kirsten Hassenfeld, Quisqueya Henríquez, Nneka Jones, Angela Kullman, Mernet Larsen, Tao Lewis, Marcia Marcus, Carol Mickett, Ya La’Ford, Claudia Ryan, Kelly Rysavy, Selina Román, Robert Stackhouse, Alma Thomas, Francine Tint, Niki de Saint Phalle, Jane Wilson, Marisol, Mika Rottenberg

This exhibition is also supported by Avant Garde, the Museum’s women’s affinity group. Through their support, the Tampa Museum of Art continues to expand its collection and create opportunities to share these important voices with the community.

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.

About the Artist 

Born in 1973 in Georgetown, Guyana, Mattai has lived across continents yet retains close ties to the South Asian communities in the Caribbean and US. The artist earned her MFA in painting and drawing, as well as an MA in South Asian art from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. In addition to the Tampa Museum of Art, Mattai has received solo exhibitions at the ICA San Francisco; Seattle Art Museum; Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens, New York; Joselyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska; and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC. In 2025, Mattai’s art was selected for the Saõ Paulo Biennial exhibition entitled Not All Travellers Walk Roads. Suchitra Mattai lives and works in Los Angeles, California 

Filmed from the balcony of Atlas’s temporary apartment on Captiva Island, the artist captured the breathtaking sight of the Florida sunset and Gulf shores over several weeks. An abstract landscape, Atlas created a grid comprised of 36 sunsets that captured the brilliant orange sun dipping into, and ultimately beneath, the horizon. A pensive soundtrack accompanies the video installation, emphasizing the culmination of the day. The video features a sculptural component—an illuminated clock that counts down from 18 minutes to zero, a representation of the time it takes the sun to set. Kiss the Day Goodbye alludes to the passage of time and sentiments related to endings. When the countdown clock strikes zero, the video restarts and the sun begins its descent once more, a metaphor for the cycle of days and events that shape our lives.

The presentation of Kiss the Day Goodbye at the Tampa Museum of Art coincides with the 1-year anniversary of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, which arrived on the Gulf Coast as category 4 and category 3 hurricanes two weeks apart from each other in the fall of 2024. The catastrophic weather harmed the region’s coastlines and damaged swathes of neighborhoods in the Tampa Bay area. Atlas’s Kiss the Day Goodbye, created by the artist 10 years ago, reminds viewers of the timeless beauty of the Gulf’s shorelines, the enduring wonder of its ecosystem, and the fragility of our coastal environment. Hurricanes Helene and Milton upended life in Tampa Bay. Yet with each ending comes beginnings, a sentiment that has strengthened our sense of community. Each breathtaking sunset serves as a reminder of why we call Tampa Bay home.