Category: Current Exhibitions

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.

The Tampa Museum of Art acquired its first drapo Vodou, or Vodou flag, over twenty-five years ago. Myrlande Constant’s flag Papa Zaka/St. Isidore was gifted to the collection by notable Haitian art collectors Kay and Roderick Heller. An early work by Constant, the flag reflects the customary size and imagery associated with this most beloved tradition of Haiti’s sacred arts. At the center of the composition is a depiction of a lwa, or deity, from the Vodou pantheon and a geometric border frames the image. Over time, Constant’s flags have increased in scale and visual complexity. Constant’s work represents a different approach to flagmaking—notably she is one the few women working in a medium traditionally associated with Vodou priests and male artisans. For the past 30 years, she has pushed the boundaries of the medium with her approach to color, light, and pattern. Today, Constant is celebrated as one of Haiti’s most accomplished contemporary artists and her art is exhibited across the world.

Born in Port-au-Prince, Constant was raised by her mother Jane Constant, a seamstress. In her teens, she worked with her mother in one of Haiti’s textile factories that made wedding dresses for brides in the US and Europe. Poor conditions and minimal wages caused her to quit, and she pursued the craft of flagmaking. Although she is versed in Vodou practices, Constant views her art in relation to textiles and painting, rather than as ritual flags. Distinct from her male contemporaries, Constant’s flags incorporate the tambour stitch, a technique she learned at the textile factory that allows her to create different textures and depth with sequins and beads. She also works in reverse—after drawing the image on cloth attached to supports, Constant and her assistants sew each bead from the underside and out of their view. The final picture is revealed once the cloth is turned over for inspection.

Focal Point: The David Hall Photography Collection presents 40 works from the holdings of Tampa-based collector and photographer David Hall. With over 400 works in the collection, the pictures on view present a sample of the photographers and images David admired as a lifelong photo enthusiast. The collection shares the story of photography in the 20^th century as the medium evolved from historical documentation to an admired form of visual art. David was interested in the history of photography and held a special passion for photographs made between World War One and World War Two, a transformative period in art.

This intimate exhibition is loosely organized by the themes prevalent in the David Hall Collection. Many of the images on view represent iconic works from the photographers’ oeuvre, such as Ruth Orkin’s American Girl in Italy, Young Farmers by August Sander, and Ansel Adams’ Half Dome in Yosemite National Park. Print publications, such as LIFE magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, and Vogue, employed and championed trailblazing photographers such as Richard Avedon, Alfred Eisenstaedt, and Philippe Halsman, who shot memorable moments of the 20^th century.

The David Hall Collection also includes important works by Group f/64, the California collective of photographers who forged a new aesthetic in opposition to the dominant photographic trends in New York. Pictures by Adams, Ruth Bernhard, and Edward Weston represent the “pure photography” style of Group f/64. A small group of works by David’s San Francisco-based photographer friends—such as Judy Dater, Richard Hartman, Polly Gaillard, and Lisa Law—allude to his own time spent in California.

Women, either as the photographer or subject, represent a significant number of works in the collection. As highlighted by the works on view in Focal Point, women photographers created groundbreaking bodies of work. Berenice Abbott, Diane Arbus, and Lillian Bassman were at the forefront of artistic innovation at a time when women did not receive the same recognition or support as their male counterparts. Portraits of women—ranging from the muse, the nude, the artist, or the sister—reveal the sitters’ sense of confidence, resilience, joy, and grace, as well as their ease in the
company of the photographer.

About David Hall

David Hall (1944 – 2024) was an arts advocate, philanthropist, music enthusiast, photographer, and collector. A Tampa native, David graduated from Plant High School and the University of South Florida. The San Francisco Bay Area was a second home to David, who spent numerous years living between California and Florida with his partner Judy Tampa. David loved cameras from an early age and studied photography at UC Berkeley with Judy Dater. He simultaneously took pictures and collected photography, but focused on the latter more intently when he returned to Tampa permanently. David was one of the co-founders of the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts (FMoPA) and a supporter of arts organizations, including the Tampa Museum of Art. Focal Point: The David Hall Photography Collection pays tribute to David, his legacy, and contributions to Tampa’s arts community.

Exhibition Sponsored in part by:

The Frank E. Duckwall Fund at the Community Foundation of Tampa Bay

Supporting Sponsor:

Anderson Bucklew Charitable Foundation

Paintings from Tampa Bay Collections

On view May 15, 2025 – February 1, 2026

In the 1880s, Impressionism made its way to America from Europe and became a national style of painting in the United States that remains widely beloved to this day. With roots in France, Impressionism launched in 1874 with an avant-garde exhibition by Parisian painters—Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas and others—who challenged traditional painting styles of the time. Although Impressionism in France experienced a period of popularity for only a decade, it captivated young American artists abroad who were inspired by the painters’ ability to capture light and color through observation and plein air painting.

In the 19th-century, Paris was the center of the art world and artists flocked to the city to study art in its esteemed academies and famous museums. The École des Beaux-Arts, the oldest and most admired art academy in France, was highly selective of its students. Many Americans studied at Académie Julian where the language requirement was less strict and more significantly, open to accepting female artists. American painters were initially bewildered by and then beguiled by the Impressionist movement. They adapted to this new direction and in turn inspired other artists, art dealers, and American collectors, including Industrialists Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and Andrew Mellon, to embrace Impressionist art. Artists featured in American Gaze, such as Mary Cassatt, Childe Hassam, William Merritt Chase, and Theodore Robinson, helped introduce this new approach to painting to American audiences.

The modern age was upon America. Like their European counterparts, the American Impressionists were inspired by the philosophy that painting what they knew and what they experienced firsthand was more truthful and thus more meaningful. Rather than capturing the past or historical moments on canvas, the artists were more interested in painting fleeting moments in the untouched landscape and the modernization of cities in the young nation. Artist colonies on the eastern seaboard, such as Shinnecock Hills in Long Island, founded by William Merrit Chase, and Childe Hassam, who taught off the New Hampshire coast, created a stronghold for Impressionism in the United States.

American Impressionism developed its own identity—one deeply intertwined with the country’s social, cultural, and historical shifts. American Gaze: Impressionism, Paintings from Tampa Bay Collections celebrates the contributions of American Impressionists from the late 1800s to the 1930s, a period of great transformation in the United States. The exhibition features six sections with over 60 paintings on view: Impression, French Influencers; Light Shifts; Figures and Flora; Countryside; and American Gaze. Together, the paintings highlight how American Impressionists captured the beauty of their surroundings and reveals a broader story of artistic evolution in the United States.

Community Sponsor:

Anonymous Foundation

Exhibition Sponsor:

Supporting Sponsor:

Anderson Bucklew Charitable Foundation

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.

What little is known about the ancient Etruscans inhabiting central Italy and beyond is largely due to their interactions with the Romans. No historical accounts of their own have come down to us. Their language can be deciphered and is partially understood, but its origin remains uncertain. Etruscan is considered a Paleo-European Language, predating and thus unrelated to Indo-European languages such as Greek and Latin. The Iron Age “Villanovan” culture (ca. 900-700 ʙᴄᴇ), first discovered in the north Italian town of Villanova near Bologna, is now considered the earliest appearance of a distinct Etruscan culture. The Etruscan city-states in central Italy reached their pinnacle in the Archaic and Classical periods (ca. 700-350 ʙᴄᴇ), after which the Etruscans were gradually acculturated by the growing power of Rome.

Etruscan states maintained contact and were variously influenced by surrounding civilizations in central and southern Europe as well as northern Africa, particularly Greece and Rome, Carthage and Egypt. Gaining their wealth through international copper and iron trade, independent city states joined into an Etruscan federation. The Etruscan nobility participated in an elite culture of exchange, involving lavish banquets and gift-giving, connecting Etruria to south Italy and the Greek world. The elite’s wealth was displayed in rich jewelry; their military power was reflected in impressive armor. Etruscan art and artifacts include bronze and terracotta statues, architecture and ornaments, metalware and glossy black-slip ceramics. Their culture is best known today from surviving tombs and sanctuaries. Tombs held human-form coffins or ash urns, conveying a prominent position of noblewomen. Elaborate frescoes adorned tomb walls, depicting mythology, banquets, and daily life, emphasizing the Etruscans’ belief in the afterlife and the importance of commemorating the departed. Etruscan pantheon gradually incorporated elements of Greek, Roman, and other influences. Priests played a significant role in interpreting the will of the gods through divination.

In a recent interview, artist Vaughn Spann (American, b. 1992) remarked, “Abstraction maps reality.” The four monumental paintings on view, all from the series Marked Men, represent the convergence of abstraction and figuration in Spann’s art. Rendered as a grid, each panel features a prominent ‘X’ at the center of the composition. Vibrant paint—from sapphire to sky blue, crimson red, fire orange, and marigold yellow, to blush pink and emerald green—emphasize Spann’s lattice of kaleidoscopic color. A combination of pigment and housepaint, the artist works the surface of the painting on the floor of his studio, building texture withing the picture plane, and then completes the work upright on the wall.

The X serves as a stand-in for the body and represents both personal and collective experiences. Created in a variety of hues and form, the X ranges from prominently visible to camouflaged or hidden. In Spann’s paintings, the X serves as a portrait of the everyman who has been targeted in racial profiling. It reflects self as well as the unknown or anonymous person. In discussing the inspiration for the Marked Men series, Spann shared: “I was stopped and frisked for the first time while I was an undergrad student…I was walking home from studying at a friend’s house. Cops pulled me over. Four other cop cars came by. They put me against a gate, and my hands are up, split. That same gesture echoes the X. And, for me, that’s such a symbolic form, and so powerful to this contemporary moment.”

Spann’s paintings illustrate a breadth of art historical and contemporary art influences, from the colorful abstract paintings by Stanley Whitney and Brice Marden’s lyrical yet minimal canvases, to Pop art icon Andy Warhol. Although each painter offers a uniquely different approach to art making, the grid and notion of repetition or seriality unites the artists. Both a formal and narrative choice, the containment of the grid heightens the image’s meaning or allegory. In discussing his grid paintings, Whitney once remarked, “There is freedom in setting limits for one self.” Spann, greatly inspired by Whitney, builds on this sentiment and adds, “…with freedom comes responsibility.” In this gallery, Spann’s Marked Men series signifies the artist’s dedication to social activism while paying homage to art history.

Born in Orlando, Florida, Vaughn Spann received his BFA in studio art from Rutgers State University and earned his MFA in painting and printmaking from Yale University’s School of Art. His art has been exhibited across the globe, with exhibitions mounted at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Rubell Museum. Spann’s work resides in the collections of the North Carolina Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Buffalo AKG Art Museum, and others.