Category: Current Exhibitions

The Tampa Museum of Art’s permanent collection includes one of the largest collections of drapo vodou (Haitian vodou flags) in the Southeast. These newly acquired works, largely gifted by the Gessen Collection, will remain on view for an extended display with new rotations focused on various themes and artists associated with drapo vodou. The inaugural display will survey the first, second, and third generations of flagmakers and the evolution of the genre from ritual art to high art. Artists featured in this selection include Clotaire Bazile, Myrlande Constant, Silva Joseph, Edgar Jean-Louis, Antoine Oleyant, Yves Telemak, George Valris, and others.

Drapo Vodou, or ritual flags, are the most celebrated of Haiti’s sacred arts. The flags reflect the creative inclusivity of Vodou, which combines and juxtaposes African symbols with those of Europe and the Americas to form a mosaic of ritual art. The flags are made of sequins, beads, golden ribbons, and ropes, among other things, which are hand-sewn onto various types of fabric, from simple burlap to velvet and satin. Due to the embargo, flags created in the 1990s were often made with hand-dyed, even hand-made, sequins. Each flag features approximately 2,000 to 20,000 sequins and beads, hand-stitched by artists trained in the tradition of drapo Vodou. First-generation artists such as Clotaire Bazile, Silva Joseph, and Edgar Jean-Louis exemplify the traditional format and design of the flagmakers working in the Bel-Air neighborhood of Port-au-Prince. Second-generation artists, including Joseph Oldof Pierre, Yves Telemaque, Georges Valris, and Vil Odelesse, inherited the craftsmanship of the first generation and created new interpretations of Vodou flags. 

Vodou flags traditionally feature a central image with a geometric border. The imagery ranges from depictions of lwas (Vodou gods) or veves (symbols of the gods). The bead and sequin colors selected are typically associated with the god featured on the flag. In some flags, the syncretization of Catholicism and Vodou is evident, and the flagmaker has incorporated a chromolithograph, a paper image of a saint’s face, hands, or feet, into the textile. The flags in this selection feature several of the major lwas (or deities) present in the Vodou pantheon, including St. Jacques, Erzulie, Gran Bois, Baron, and Papa Zaka.  

The Tampa Museum of Art started collecting Haitian objects over twenty years ago but began acquiring in earnest in 2019 after receiving a gift of twenty-one flags by collectors Ed and Ann Gessen. To date, the collection includes 135 Haitian flags and represents one of the largest collections of drapo Vodou in the U.S. Over the next two years, the Tampa Museum of Art will present highlights from these holdings in this space. This inaugural display introduces the artists and motifs unique to Haiti’s sequin arts. This rotation of flags focuses on depictions of Erzulie Freida, the Goddess of Love, Beauty, Femininity, and Fertility, and Erzulie Danthor, the fierce protector of children, women, and vulnerable people.

Textiles, such as the Vodou flags, are sensitive to light. As part of the care and conservation for these objects, the flags are changed out every six months. Come back to the Tampa Museum of Art to view new Vodou flags from the permanent collection!

June 18, 2022 – June 29, 2025

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. 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.

Purvis Young: Redux is one of several exhibitions on view between 2022-2024, highlighting the Tampa Museum of Art’s permanent collection focused on ancient art and modern and contemporary art.

Purvis Young: Redux is presented in part by the Terra Foundation for American Art.

About the Purvis Young collection at the Tampa Museum of Art

In 2004, the Rubell Family Foundation gifted 91 artworks to the Tampa Museum of Art by self-taught artist Purvis Young (American, 1943-2010). The selection of assemblage paintings represents a snapshot of Young’s prolific artistic production. Based in the Overtown neighborhood of Miami, Florida, Young created an impressive body of work that numbered in the thousands. 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 motivated Young to make art, and he built his compositions with various forms and textures. He constructed his palette—fiery reds, golden yellow, forest green, navy blue, hot pink—from everyday household paints. Although his means were limited, Young was recognized throughout Miami for his remarkable painting practice and his contributions to the cultural landscape of South Florida.

About Purvis Young

Born in 1943 in Miami, Florida, Purvis Young’s mother encouraged her son’s artistic talents. His grandparents immigrated to Miami by boat from the Bahamas and settled in Overtown. Although he did not complete high school, Young educated himself as an adult by watching documentaries and reading. He spent hours at the Miami-Dade Public Library, and books became an important part of his life and work.

As a child, Young enjoyed drawing, however, it wasn’t until adulthood that he embraced painting. He spent hours looking at books filled with imagery by El Greco, Rembrandt, Paul Gaugin, and Vincent van Gogh. In the early 1970s, Young began painting regularly, and he created a visual language reflective of life in Overtown. Although adversity was constant, Young’s neighborhood inspired him, and he strove to paint positive imagery. Angels with halos dominated his work and represented the good he admired in people. He revered pregnant women and holy men and painted this imagery in a range of configurations. While he supported his community, he also acknowledged its struggles.

Young created his magnum opus early in his career. For a short period of time in the 1970s, Young installed his paintings from the ground to the rooftops of abandoned storefronts in his neighborhood. The Wall of Respect in Chicago, a mural that featured heroic black men and women painted at the height of the Civil Rights Movement in the late 1960s, influenced Young. He aimed to replicate the Wall of Respect in Overtown with his powerful, provocative paintings and often overlapped the paintings in an extreme salon-style hang. Titled Goodbread Alley Mural, the project was on view from approximately 1971-74 until the City of Miami started to dismantle the artwork. The installation on view at the Tampa Museum of Art takes inspiration from the Goodbread Alley Mural and features the entirety of the Museum’s Purvis Young collection.

In the late 1990s, Don and Mera Rubell, art collectors based in Miami, befriended the artist and acquired the contents of Young’s studio. In total, they transferred over 3,300 works from his studio to their art warehouse. Since then, they have donated nearly 500 works by Purvis Young to museums and universities across the country. Young died in 2010, and today his work resides in private and public collections across the globe.