Categories
Current Exhibitions

Frontiers of Impressionism: Paintings from the Worcester Art Museum

On view September 28, 2023 through January 7, 2024

Childe Hassam, "Gathering Flowers in a French Garden", 1888. Oil on canvas. Worcester Art Museum, Theodore T. and Mary G. Ellis Collection, 1940.87. Image courtesy of the Worcester Art Museum.
Childe Hassam, Gathering Flowers in a French Garden, 1888. Oil on canvas. Worcester Art Museum, Theodore T. and Mary G. Ellis Collection, 1940.87. Image courtesy of the Worcester Art Museum.
John Singer Sargent (American, 1856-1925), "Oranges at Corfu", about 1909. Oil on canvas. Worcester Art Museum, Theodore T. and Mary G. Ellis Collection, 1940.99. Image courtesy of the Worcester Art Museum.
John Singer Sargent (American, 1856-1925), Oranges at Corfu, about 1909. Oil on canvas. Worcester Art Museum, Theodore T. and Mary G. Ellis Collection, 1940.99. Image courtesy of the Worcester Art Museum.

Over the past 125 years, the Worcester Art Museum has assembled a stunning collection of American and European paintings that tell the story of Impressionism’s roots and emergence in France and its subsequent expansion to the United States, Germany, Scandinavia, and beyond. Frontiers of Impressionism: Paintings from the Worcester Art Museum includes 53 works by over 30 artists—including Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Mary Cassatt, Childe Hassam, and Max Slevogt. Together, they demonstrate Impressionism’s international allure and its national adaptations captured in subjects from Monet’s famed Giverny lily pond to the natural wonders of the Grand Canyon.

Frontiers of Impressionism: Paintings from the Worcester Art Museum is organized by

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Support the exhibition Frontiers of Impressionism: Paintings from the Worcester Art Museum at the Tampa Museum of Art. As a benefit of sponsoring a work of art in the exhibition, supporters will be recognized by name as a sponsor underneath the painting of their choosing, based on sponsorship level, during the exhibition duration.

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Categories
Current Exhibitions

A Passion for Haitian Art: The Albrecht and Heller Collections

On view August 17, 2023 through March 17, 2024

Gerard Valcin (Haitian, 1925-1988), "La Combite", 1974. Oil on masonite. 45 x 36 inches. Tampa Museum of Art, Gift of the Arthur Albrecht Revocable Trust, TN.2022.079
Gerard Valcin (Haitian, 1925-1988), La Combite, 1974. Oil on masonite. 45 x 36 inches. Tampa Museum of Art, Gift of the Arthur Albrecht Revocable Trust, TN.2022.079
Frantz Zephirin, "La Sirene", 1990s. Oil on canvas. 49 1/4 x 25 1/8 inches. Kay & Roderick Heller.
Frantz Zephirin, La Sirene, 1990s. Oil on canvas. 49 1/4 x 25 1/8 inches. Kay & Roderick Heller.

The occupation of the Republic of Haiti by the US in the early part of the 20th-century lasted for more than three decades. By the time they left in the 1930s, after being mired in countless rebellions by the Haitian peasantry and a stiff opposition across the globe, Americans at home were well aware of the island to their south. Some of the cultural particularities of that nation piqued Hollywood’s interest and they did not miss on the salacious potential those unfamiliar customs could have on the public. Movies such as I Walked with a Zombie (1943) started a trend that to this day we cannot see its end, such as the international popularity of the television series The Walking Dead. Despite the cultural appropriation and misinterpretations of Haiti’s mystical traditions, the Caribbean Island captured the globe’s attention.

The opening of the Centre d’Art in Port-au-Prince in 1944 by an American conscientious objector and a handful of Haitian intellectuals attracted artists from all walks of life to its galleries and open air studios. Artists streamed to the Centre from Haiti’s urban and rural communities and caused an immediate sensation in the art world. Presented at first as intuitive and naïve, what the artists proposed was in fact their vision of their world as they lived and saw it. After three centuries as slave labor in sugar plantations in the French colony of St. Domingue, and after a hard won freedom where they fought the most advanced army of its day—the French Army under Napoleon, and the scorn this created in most advanced nations, they were at last free to try to recollect their memories. The paintings on view in this exhibition, created between the 1950s and 1990s, demonstrate how Haitians finally felt liberated in their ability to reconstruct what they had lost or had been forbidden for so long—to honor their gods, spirituality, and sacred traditions. Through the prism of slavery and its hardships, their visions offered something new if not fantastic.

All of this did attract attention and for a time Haiti was visited by many tourists, amongst them art enthusiasts who became passionate collectors. Their connoisseurship and support of Haitian art has benefitted the permanent collection of the Tampa Museum of Art, who now holds one the most formidable holdings of Haitian art in the US. The fact the Museum has in its holdings such a large number of excellent works of art from their neighbor to the south enables visitors, as well as the many transplanted Haitians in the region, to grasp and admire a complex history through art and the spirit of Haiti.

A Passion for Haitian Art: The Albrecht and Heller Collections is presented in conjunction with Reframing Haitian Art: The Arthur Albrecht Collection and curated by Edouard Duval Carrié, guest curator.

About the Collectors

A Passion for Haitian Art: The Albrecht and Heller Collections and Reframing Haitian Art: The Arthur Albrecht Collection in the adjacent gallery present luminary artists frequenting the Centre d’Art since in its beginnings in the late 1940s, as well as second- and third-generation artists of the organization. Even though many of them are not strictly affiliated with the Centre, most had their beginnings there and moved onward. Collectors traveling to Haiti not only visited the Centre but other art galleries that sprung up in Port-au-Prince. A Passion for Haitian Art: The Albrecht and Heller Collections highlights two collections acquired over a similar period yet housed on opposite coasts of the US.

The Arthur Albrecht Collection, San Francisco, California

In 2022, the Arthur Albrecht Revocable Trust gifted the Tampa Museum of Art a collection of 20th-century masterworks by Haitian artists. The Albrecht Collection, comprised of 89 paintings and sculptures, and 55 pieces of related support materials, is one of the most esteemed collections of modern Haitian art and has never been on view to the public until today. Arthur Albrecht (1927–2018) was an avid collector with a deep love for Haiti. He lived with this collection in his home on San Francisco’s famed Lombard Street. Although much of his connection to Haiti and its artists is unknown, his collecting interests focused primarily on the first- and second-generation artists associated with the Centre d’Art, Haiti’s premier art school and visual art center. The collection had not left private hands until now and the paintings and sculptures were in need of care and conservation. With grant funds from the Bank of America Art Conservation Project, the Museum was able to clean and restore the collection nearly to the objects’ original condition. As seen in this gallery, conservation care revealed the pristine quality of line, form, and color that heralds this group as master artists.

The Kay and Roderick Heller Collection, Tampa, Florida and Franklin, Tennessee

Kay Culbreath Heller has Haiti in her heart. Her involvement with the island started when she worked at Hospital Bon Samaritain with Dr. William Hodges and his family in the remote small town of Limbé in northern Haiti. The art of Haiti caught her eye and imagination, and she once wrote, “Nothing prepared me for the life and vitality of Haiti.” With Beverly Sullivan of Washington, Kay found ways to promote the artists through large fundraisers and art sales stateside benefitting Haitian medical, arts, and humanitarian organizations. In 2000, Kay co-curated the first exhibition of Haitian art at the Tampa Museum of Art entitled Island Delights: The Spirit and Passion of Haitian Art.

This passion for Haiti extended to Roderick Heller, a distinguished lawyer and preservationist from Washington, DC who has employed his academic rigor to an all-encompassing project on Haiti’s art. He is assembling a catalogue raisonné of his favorite Haitian artist, Rigaud Benoit, one of the initial group of artists who joined the Centre in its early days. This is not an easy task as works of art by this artist and others are today scattered all over the world. The Hellers’ goal through international research is to help illuminate the artistic legacy and creativity of Haiti and its people.

Funds for the conservation of the Arthur Albrecht Collection were generously provided through a grant from the Bank of America Art Conservation Project

Bank of America
Categories
Current Exhibitions

Reframing Haitian Art: Masterworks from the Arthur Albrecht Collection

On view April 26, 2023 through June 23, 2024

André Pierre (Haitian, b. 1914), Erzulie, 1973. Oil on canvas. 37 x 26 inches. Tampa Museum of Art, Gift of the Arthur Albrecht Revocable Trust.
André Pierre (Haitian, b. 1914), Erzulie, 1973. Oil on canvas. 37 x 26 inches. Tampa Museum of Art, Gift of the Arthur Albrecht Revocable Trust.
Préfète Duffaut (Haitian, 1923-2012), Magician, c. mid. 1960s. Oil on Masonite. 46 x 24 inches. Tampa Museum of Art, Gift of the Arthur Albrecht Revocable Trust.
Préfète Duffaut (Haitian, 1923-2012), Magician, c. mid. 1960s. Oil on Masonite. 46 x 24 inches. Tampa Museum of Art, Gift of the Arthur Albrecht Revocable Trust.

Haiti emerged as a sovereign state after a massive slave rebellion overturned the established order in a dramatic and violent revolution. Since 1804, the island nation has embarked in continual attempts at self-rule but many of these efforts proved unsuccessful, never fulfilling the dreams of a better life cherished by the former enslaved. France, the former colonial power ousted by the rebellion and bitter at the loss of her crown jewel, made sure itself and its allies never gave the first Black republic a fair chance to compete fairly in the concert of nations. The successive governments of Haiti could not garner enough economic clout to make the transfer of impoverished and destitute slaves into a citizenry that could muster and foster a stable, progressive society. All in all, the former slaves were left mostly to their own devices when it came to nation building. Forming an identity needed and required with their new freedoms remained unresolved for centuries. Today, they remain in that constant quest for social cohesion but Haitians noteworthy accomplishments in the field of visual art helped define its national character. 

Contrary to most of its neighbors in the Caribbean archipelago, one can say that Haiti’s visual culture emanates from its majority working class rather than from a well-tutored elite or directed from government led cultural initiatives.  Early travelers’ accounts to the island revealed cultural flourishes peculiar and distinct from Haiti’s neighbors. Their narratives perceived the Black republic as a place of wonder. One could sense it in the reports detailed in Eugène Aubin’s In Haiti: Planters of Yesteryears, Negroes of Today (1910) or William Seabrook’s book The Magic Island (1929). Published in the early 20th-century, both books featured extensive photographic coverage of the island nation but revealed unsympathetic and unabashedly racist opinions of Haiti. However, the publications’ images included ornate wall paintings unique to the rural habitats and sacred sites of Vodou temples, which were profusely decorated inside and outside. These photographs provided a glimpse of what would become decades later, a “discovery” of Haiti’s creative legacy. 

In 1944, Haitian intellectuals collaborated with Dewitt Peters, an American conscientious objector, to found the Centre d’Art in Port-au-Prince. The institution provided access to art to all strata of Haitian society. Artists gravitated to the Centre d’Art and what they brought with them was, though very far from any academia, a varied, fresh, and startling artistic expression. Each artist depicted a world they envisioned or observed in their own way. At the time the devotional practice of Vaudo was prohibited yet the artists creatively revealed the outlawed spirits and lwas (Vodou deities) to the world. The artists also depicted a way of life—simple and ordered—as probably more a wish than everyday circumstances. The bucolic aspect of these works likely triggered the term “naïve” as an explanation of Haiti’s art yet it was anything but simple. The art served as a form of protest in that artists pointed out at what Haitian’s expected, wanted, and deserved, and not what they had.   

This exhibition aims to reframe the context of modern Haitian art. The paintings in this gallery, all masterworks from the Arthur Albrecht Collection, attest to the unique and complex history of Haiti and its cultural legacy. Displayed at different heights yet in dialogue with each other, this installation metaphorically represents the artists’ ideas and ideals. Spiritual figures hover above mortals, as seen in works by André Pierre and Robert Saint Brice. Paintings by the Obin Family, Riguad Benoit, and Salnave Philippe-Auguste hang at a height that envelops the viewer rather than serve as a passive encounter with the artists’ world. The Albrecht Collection provides an overview of the production of art from an island nation, that despite adversity and strife, has and continues to strive in its creative practices.  

Reframing Haitian Art: Masterworks from the Arthur Albrecht Collection was curated by Edouard Duval Carrié, guest curator. 

Funds for the conservation of the Arthur Albrecht Collection were generously provided through a grant from the Bank of America Art Conservation Project.

Bank of America
Categories
Current Exhibitions

Pepe Mar: Myth and Magic

On view July 13, 2023 through February 18, 2024

Installation view of "Pepe Mar: Myth and Magic" at the Tampa Museum of Art. Photography by Zachary Balber.
Installation view of Pepe Mar: Myth and Magic at the Tampa Museum of Art. Photography by Zachary Balber.
Installation view of "Pepe Mar: Myth and Magic" at the Tampa Museum of Art. Photography by Zachary Balber.
Installation view of Pepe Mar: Myth and Magic at the Tampa Museum of Art. Photography by Zachary Balber.

Pepe Mar: Myth and Magic represents the first survey of Pepe Mar’s art and highlights 15-years of the artist’s practice, from 2006 to 2023. Presented as a Gesamtkunstwerk, the exhibition itself has been conceptualized as an immersive artwork with the objects on view complemented by the artist’s vibrant fabric walls, plush poufs for sitting, and lush orange carpet. Each work is uniquely different yet incorporates Mar’s signature materials—such as paper cut-outs from magazines, catalogues, and books, decorative textile motifs, clay vessels and figurines, as well as found objects discovered by the artist in shops and thrift stores throughout the world.

Mar opens the exhibition with a sculpture garden and introduces the figure “Paprika,” the artist’s alter ego. Paprika anchors Mar’s work and represents the personal and the Other, as well as the fusion of medium and object. Loosely chronological, Pepe Mar: Myth and Magic is organized by concepts and processes present in Mar’s oeuvre: Assemblage, Revival and Mythologies, Face-Off, and Fabric Paintings. Assemblage examines personal and social identities as well as Queer aesthetics. Revival and Mythologies explores the artist as collector and ethnographer. In this section, the magnum opus The Cabinet of Dr. Mar highlights visual traditions and personal lore. The grid of collages entitled Face-Off illustrates Mar’s approach to portraiture, masking, and explorations of self. Fabric Paintings serve as an archive of the artist’s past works with sculptures, assemblages, and photographs transformed into colorful textiles.

Pepe Mar: Myth and Magic features 60 works of art from public and private collections across the United States, including Burning Up, a collage sculpture acquired by the Tampa Museum of Art in 2019 that served as the inspiration for this survey exhibition. The title of the exhibition pays homage to the 1979 exhibition of Mexican master painter Rufino Tamayo entitled Rufino Tamayo: Myth and Magic, organized by the Solomon R.Guggenheim Museum in New York City. While the works on view highlight Mar’s influences—art history, Mexican artifacts and architecture, fashion, science fiction, and pop culture—the exhibition also speaks to the artist’s biography. Living between the border of the US and Mexico, and later establishing roots in Miami, Florida, the art on view reveals the connections between self and site, and material as metaphor. As seen in Pepe Mar: Myth and Magic, the works from the past 15 years reflect the evolution of an artist, as well as a transformative return to his creative roots.

The accompanying catalogue Pepe Mar: Myth and Magic will be published in Fall 2023.

Installation view of "Pepe Mar: Myth and Magic" at the Tampa Museum of Art. Photography by Zachary Balber.
Installation view of Pepe Mar: Myth and Magic at the Tampa Museum of Art. Photography by Zachary Balber.
Installation view of "Pepe Mar: Myth and Magic" at the Tampa Museum of Art. Photography by Zachary Balber.
Installation view of Pepe Mar: Myth and Magic at the Tampa Museum of Art. Photography by Zachary Balber.

About the Artist

Born in 1977 in Reynosa, Mexico, close to the Mexico/United States border, Pepe Mar spent his childhood living between two cultures. His family moved to Brownsville, Texas during Mar’s teenage years and he started making art in his family’s garage. As a young artist, he purchased inexpensive materials such as feathers and beads from craft stores such as Michael’s. He received his BFA from the California College of the Arts in San Francisco and earned his MFA from Florida International University in Miami.

Mar has received several prominent grants, including an Ellies Award from Oolite Arts in 2020 and 2018. Solo exhibitions have been mounted at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO (2022); Frost Art Museum at FIU (2020), Miami, FL; Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, PA (2019); and Locust Projects, Miami, FL (2018). In Fall 2023, a solo exhibition of Mar’s work will be presented at the Everson Museum in Syracuse, NY. Mar is represented by David Castillo. The artist lives and works in Miami, Florida.

Pepe Mar: Myth and Magic is funded by The Ellies, Miami’s visual arts awards, presented by Oolite Arts.

Oolite Arts

Sponsors:

Dr. Charles Boyd, David Castillo, Elizabeth Dascal Spector & Vladimir Spector, Leslie & Gregory Ferrero, Amy & Harry Hollub, Alexa & Adam Wolman

Publication Sponsors:

The Breathe Project, Daphna & Ariel Bentata, Carmen Amalia Corrales, Cecilia & Ernesto Poma, Clara & Juan Toro, Arlyne & Stephen Wayner, Clay Blevins, Jacqueline Chariff

Supported in part by:

Tampa Museum of Art Foundation
Culture Builds Florida - Florida Department of State - Division of Arts & Culture
Categories
Current Exhibitions

Garry Winogrand: Women are Beautiful

On view August 5, 2023 through April 21, 2024

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984), "Centennial Ball, Metropolitan Museum, New York" from "Women are Beautiful" portfolio, 1969. Gelatin silver print. Tampa Museum of Art. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John Osterweil, 1984.074.039. © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.
Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984), Centennial Ball, Metropolitan Museum, New York from Women are Beautiful portfolio, 1969. Gelatin silver print. Tampa Museum of Art. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John Osterweil, 1984.074.039. © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

A celebrated artist, Garry Winogrand transformed the genre of street photography in the 1960s. With his Leica camera in hand, he captured the movements, both hurried and introspective, and raw emotions of his subjects. Initially published as a monograph, the portfolio Women are Beautiful (1975) represents Winogrand’s most significant project. Comprised of 85 photographs, the series features women engaged a range of ordinary activities –walking across the street, enjoying a conversation, and dancing in a crowd. Some of the photos are direct, with the woman walking straight towards Winogrand’s lens, while others reveal the photographer observing quiet moments of solitude.

In the early 1980s, the Tampa Museum of Art established photography—with an emphasis on work created after 1970—as a primary collecting area. The collection now comprises more than 950 photographs and demonstrates how the medium evolved throughout the 20th-century. TMA’s photography collection includes works by John Baldessari, James Casebere, and Cindy Sherman, as well as the candid photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Andy Warhol, and Winogrand.

This exhibition is sponsored by David Hall and Judy Tampa

Categories
Current Exhibitions

Laura with Bun by Jaume Plensa

On view now

Jaume Plensa (Spanish, b. 1955) Laura with Bun, 2014.. Cast iron.
© Jaume Plensa. Courtesy Galerie Lelong, New York
Photo: Courtesy Skip O’Rourke/Tampa Bay Times

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. This is aptly demonstrated in his first major commission in the United States, The Crown Fountain in Chicago’s Millennium Park (2004). Two 11-story LED towers face each other across a thin pool of water, with images of a changing and diverse city reflected in the water, a continuously cycling metaphor for the life of a city.

The Crown Fountain was the beginning of Plensa’s investigation of the portrait via photography and form. This led to works like Laura with Bun. At more than 23 feet tall, this artwork expresses both individual and universal traits at great scale, inviting viewers to consider multiple aspects of beauty and human nature. Like all of his large-scale female portrait heads, Laura has her eyes closed, as if looking within. In speaking about these works, Plensa has said, “Look into yourself. My piece is a mirror to reflect your image, so you can think about your own interior—how much beauty we have inside of ourselves.”

Laura with Bun initially came to Tampa as part of the 2016 exhibition Jaume Plensa: Human Landscape. Thanks to the generosity of an anonymous gift and the overwhelming popular support of nearly 100 donors, the Museum has committed to purchase the sculpture for our permanent collection. For their support of this purchase, we are most grateful to:

Anonymous

Celia & Jim Ferman

The Williams Family

Penny & Jeff Vinik

Mark Anderson & Keith Bucklew

Maureen & Douglas Cohn

Stephen & Marsha Dickey

Sara Golding Scher & David Scher

Allison, Robby, Dallas, & Adelaide Adams

Carlton Fields

Blake & Tate Casper

PNC Bank

Susie & Mitchell Rice in honor of Michael Tomor

Jeff Tucker & Len Kizner

FRIENDS of the Museum

And all the Friends of Laura:

Burton N. Mulford & R. Dean Hamric

Mary Alice McClendon

Sara & Mort Richter

Tampa Downtown Partnership

Thomas Hochhausler & Sung Lee

Julianne McKeel

Sharmila & Vivek Seth

Ellen & Don Stichter

Mrs. John Brabson in honor of her family

Reba Cardillo

Margo & Hilliard Eure

Drs. Daniel & Jamie Fernandez

Holmes Hepner & Associates Architects

Rob Iles & Mike Paonessa

Sue & Bob Isbell

Judi Kelly

Arnold & Gail Levine

Keith & Judith Maurer

Ingeborg Michaels

Dr. Richard E. & Mrs Mary B. Perry

Robin C. Sharp & Annemarie Christino

Barbara & Fell Stubbs

Laura & Ed Waller

Linda Rice

William M. Blanchard

Donna & Tom Brumfield

Suzanne Camp Crosby

John Hunter

Sandy & Floyd Juster

Art Keeble

Bob & Kathy Lewis

Leslie & Hampton Stephens

Your Neighbors at TAPS Restaurant Bar & Lounge

Pam Wysocki

Sharon & Lew Sibert

Anonymous

Hillary Carlson Cone in memory of Douglas P. Cone

Todd Edwards

Candy Olson in honor of

Charles, Henry, Edward & Margaret Jaskowiak

and Lynnea & Robbie Cobey-Broad

Keen O’Sullivan

Ellen & Bruce Houghton

Susan Landa in memory of Peter Landa

Grant Wilson & Diana Stevens

in memory of Laura Lundgren

Jim & Susan Casebeer

Chris & Stephanie Arnold

Dolores Coe

Ana Cruz

HJ Freeman

William Hein

Nancy, Ryan, & Briana Kipnis

Bill & Pam Michul

Bill Rogers

Julie Graham Sargent

Bob & Cathy Smith

Lincoln J. Tamayo

Alison Watkins

Marilyn & Robert Farber

David & Diane Drapcho

Colin DeVito

Harrison DeVito

John & Patricia Gorzka

in honor of Julia Gorzka Freeman

Bill & Judy Graham

Gail R. Hirsch

Jennifer Holmberg

Beth Iandoli

Marcia Israeloff & Paul Jacobsen

Kathy, Natalie, & Kaitlin Lowy

Amy, Michael, & Myla Martz

Joe & Laraine O’Neill

Mindy & Carl Snyder

Dana & Paul Whiting Jr.

Anonymous

Marilyn Zoidis

Alice Prida

Martha Coulter

Miriam B. Zack

Julia, Brett, & Jack Freeman

Mr. & Dr. Sarro

Anonymous

Abby Jetmundsen

Leo Pevnick

Categories
Current Exhibitions

Fleurish: The Art of Naeem Khan

On view February 25, 2023 through February 11, 2024

Naeem Khan (Indian, b. 1958), "Floating Flowers Fuchsia and Gold", 2023. Mixed media on silkscreen. 4 panels at 58 x 58 inches each, overall: 119 x 119 inches. Courtesy of the artist.
Naeem Khan (Indian, b. 1958), Floating Flowers Fuchsia and Gold, 2023. Mixed media on silkscreen. 4 panels at 58 x 58 inches each, overall: 119 x 119 inches. Courtesy of the artist.

As part of its ongoing exhibition series exploring the intersection of art and fashion, the Tampa Museum of Art presents a series of paintings by globally renowned fashion designer Naeem Khan. Khan works independently, as well collaboratively with artist Stanley Casselman as the collective KACE, to create large-scale works inspired by his ongoing exploration of flora, light, and color. Five monumental works, comprised of paint and sequins represent Khan’s inaugural museum exhibition.

The Khan Family, steeped in the tradition of fashion and textiles for over 100 years, is renowned for their atelier in Mumbai and their luxurious couture worn by luminaries and India’s royalty. Khan arrived in New York at the age of 17, travelling to the United States with his father. A business appointment with Halston changed the course of his life as the famed designer decided on the spot that Khan would be his protégé. With Halston as his mentor, Khan became immersed in Manhattan’s art and social circles. From the atelier to Studio 54 and Andy Warhol’s Factory, Khan emerged as a designer at a pivotal moment in the 1970s where the lines between art, fashion, music, film, and celebrity were often blurred, further signifying New York City as the epicenter of creativity.

While working with Halston, Khan met Andy Warhol who frequently collaborated with Halston on his projects. Khan participated in their collaborations by drawing the flowers for their designs, specifically poppies. Warhol, like Halston, took Khan under his wing and once told the young designer, “You shouldn’t hold your pencil that way. Let me show you how to draw.” Flowers, inspired by his work and friendship with Warhol as well as the flora in his home country of India, anchor Khan’s visual language.

In 2020, painter Stanley Casselman introduced himself to Khan at one of his fashion shows and was immediately struck by the beauty and power of the designer’s work. Casselman observed that Khan’s designs could be translated into painting. Conversations lead to collaboration and today the two artists work both individually and together under the name KACE. Works, such as Jardin Chrome and Jardin d’Or, feature Khan’s elaborate sequined blooms in concert with Casselman’s gestural paint strokes. The compositions reveal the signature elements of each artists’ practice. Here, Khan’s ornate craftsmanship and Casselman’s abstract mark making unite in dazzling effect.

Khan’s solo works, Floating Flowers Pink and Silver and Floating Flowers Fuchsia and Gold, nod to his familial history with fabric, color, composition, and texture while pushing the boundaries of contemporary painting. Each flower is comprised of hundreds of sequins and beads. Delicately sewn onto silkscreen material, Khan suspends the panels one over the other, creating a sculptural quality to the paintings. Fabricated in a range of petal formations and size, Khan’s blossoms both capture and reflect light. As if suspended in space, the flowers come to life, symbolizing Khan’s creative past and his burgeoning artistic future. 

KACE (Naeem Khan, Indian, b. 1958 and Stanley Casselman, American, b. 1963), "Jardin Noir", 2021. Mixed media on silkscreen. 93 x 93 inches. Courtesy of KACE.
KACE (Naeem Khan, Indian, b. 1958 and Stanley Casselman, American, b. 1963), Jardin Noir, 2021. Mixed media on silkscreen. 93 x 93 inches. Courtesy of KACE.
KACE (Naeem Khan, Indian, b. 1958 and Stanley Casselman, American, b. 1963). Detail, "Jardin d’or", 2022. Chrome over mixed media on silkscreen. 4 panels at 60 x 60 inches each, overall: 123 x 123 inches. Courtesy of KACE.
KACE (Naeem Khan, Indian, b. 1958 and Stanley Casselman, American, b. 1963). Detail, Jardin d’or, 2022. Chrome over mixed media on silkscreen. 4 panels at 60 x 60 inches each, overall: 123 x 123 inches. Courtesy of KACE.

Fleurish: The Art of Naeem Khan is presented in conjunction with the Tampa Museum of Art’s annual fundraiser CITY: Fashion + Art + Culture.

Categories
Current Exhibitions

Taking Pictures: Women of Independent Spirit

On view now through November 12, 2023

Taking Pictures: Women of Independent Spirit celebrates the anonymous women who shaped the evolution of vernacular photography during the ‘analog era’ of the late 19th to the late 20th century.

This exhibition charts photography’s momentum across the 20th century as a medium for self expression alongside the expansion of women’s independence. As self-trained image makers and collaborative subjects, women played out new ways of being in the world both in front of, and behind, the camera. Arranged here in constellations, the photographs connect through shared gestures, shadow patterns and echoing poses of women belonging to an intersection of race, class, age, and era.

These photographs record vibrant times, magic hours, private performances, and experiments with identity. One captured moment contains countless narrative directions speckled with signifiers: a photographer’s shadow spills across a lawn, the silhouette revealing the cinched waist of a dress. Someone glances at the camera with a knowing look, or turns her face away in refusal. Another woman holds her camera at eye-level and gazes into a mirror, recording herself as the author of the image. The journey made by each image is evident on the surface of the photograph itself, with its frayed edges, creases, and scratches. Each hint offers a clue to who, when, why, with each image leading only to more questions.

On these walls, the wide range of formats and visual experimentation hint at divergent and coexisting waves of image-making across the twentieth century. The photograph records an impulse to hold still for a moment, offered to us now for a longer look. With time on our side, we can let our eyes linger on what she wanted us to see.

Taking Pictures: Women of Independent Spirit is curated by celebrated gallerist Julie Saul and Carly Ries, and brings together photographs from the Collection of Peter J. Cohen.

Sponsored in part by

Categories
Current Exhibitions

Esterio Segura: Goodbye My Love

On view now

Esterio Segura (Cuban, b. 1970), "Goodbye My Love", 2013. Set of three original works. Fiberglass and automobile paint, approximately 165 x 47 x 23 1/2 inches each with slight variation. Tampa Museum of Art, Gift of Daniel Pappalardo and Susan Bellin, 2022.132-134. Photography by Paige Boscia
Esterio Segura (Cuban, b. 1970), Goodbye My Love, 2013. Set of three original works. Fiberglass and automobile paint, approximately 165 x 47 x 23 1/2 inches each with slight variation. Tampa Museum of Art, Gift of Daniel Pappalardo and Susan Bellin, 2022.132-134. Photography by Paige Boscia

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. This is fused with an easily understood title with several meanings, from the most corny and sentimental to the most controversial, from a political and social standpoint. With this work, I reference the experience of uprooting, nostalgia, memory, loss—how we experience the breakdown of everything we love.”

Born in Santiago de Cuba, Esterio Segura is a graduate of the renowned art school Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana. He works in a range of media—from painting and printmaking to sculpture and drawing—and explores themes related to Cuba’s complex socio-political history such as isolation, immigration, desire, and freedom. Segura’s sculpture La historia se muerde la cola (History Bites its Tail) is currently on view in the exhibition Time for Change: Art and Social Unrest in the Jorge M. Pérez Collection.

Good-Bye My Love is presented as part of the exhibition Prelude: An Introduction to the Permanent Collection on view in the Jean Bacon Divers Gallery.

Watch the timelapse as the TMA Curatorial team installs “Goodbye My Love”
Categories
Current Exhibitions

Life & Death in the Ancient World

On view January 13, 2023 through 2026

"Mask of Father of Comedy Terracotta sculpture; Syria; Hellenistic period, ca. 2nd-1st cent. bce. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. William Knight Zewadski to be shared jointly with the Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, 1988.034.016 
Mask of Father of Comedy Terracotta sculpture; Syria; Hellenistic period, ca. 2nd-1st cent. BCE. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. William Knight Zewadski to be shared jointly with the Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, 1988.034.016 
"Woman with Wool Basket"  Red-figure lekythos (ceramic oil vessel); Attica, Greece; Classical period, ca. 480-470 bce. Joseph Veach Noble Collection, 1986.081 
Woman with Wool Basket  Red-figure lekythos (ceramic oil vessel); Attica, Greece; Classical period, ca. 480-470 BCE. Joseph Veach Noble Collection, 1986.081 

Life in the ancient world was marked by many of the same events and experiences as our modern life: most obviously birth, marriage and death, as well as war and peace. People felt love and hate, just as us. Food and drinks stilled hunger and thirst. Music and dance provided amusement. Theater and sports provided leisure and entertainment. Trade and travel brought goods and ideas from farther away. Faith and worship offered hope when all else failed. For thousands of years, daily life will have changed very little for most common people and will have differed only depending on the land and climate of each region. Commoners toiled the land, they hunted game and gathered other foods. Men may have been called upon to serve in the army in times of war. People will have visited temples in times of public festivals or personal hardship. 

This display of the Antiquities Collection of the Tampa Museum of Art aims to introduce some of those general aspects of life and death in the ancient world. The Lemonopoulos Gallery is broadly divided into five main themes: namely (1.) daily life – including human and animal figures, everyday ceramics, metal tools and glassware, portrayals of love and beauty ideals; (2.) amusement – including theater and sports, wine production and consumption; (3.) death and dying – including funerary vessels and (fragments of) sarcophagi; (4.) religion – including illustrations of myths and rituals; and (5.) power and trade – including warfare and seafaring, as well as two coin cabinets. The displays in the middle of the gallery generally showcase one or two artworks, while those along the walls and in the aisles regularly feature a larger selection of pieces so as to exhibit the variety of the Museum’s Antiquities Collection.