Barthélémy Toguo (Cameroonian, b. 1967), Road to Exile, 2018. Wooden boat, cloth bundles, glass bottles, and plastic containers. 120 x 60 x 45 inches. Jorge M. Pérez Collection, Miami. Installation at the Tampa Museum of Art.
Time for Change: Art and Social Unrest in the Jorge M. Pérez Collection looks at how artists explore conflicts and contradictions of contemporary society, as well as analyze historical events and reframes them within the present. An interest in the marginalized, the marginal and the margins (of society, of history) unites the works in the exhibition. Time for Change was first presented as the inaugural exhibition in December 2019 at El Espacio 23, a contemporary art space founded by collector and philanthropist Jorge M. Pérez. Featuring artists from across the globe, the exhibition highlights art—from painting and sculpture to video and works on paper—that address unrest through allegory, metaphor or veiled allusion.
Time for Change: Art and Social Unrest in the Jorge M. Pérez Collection was curated by José Roca for El Espacio 23.
Francis Frith (British, 1822-1898),The Pantheon, from the album Rome Photographed, ca. 1873. Albumen silver print. 6 3/4 x 9 3/8 in. Publisher: William MacKenzie, Paternostor Row. London, Glasglow & Edinburg. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. William Knight Zewadski. 1989.109.057.f
Travel in the 19th century was difficult, expensive and time-consuming. Prior to the discovery of a way to record an image by photography in 1839, the majority of Americans had only stories and the possibility of access to drawings, paintings, and etchings to illustrate the wonders of exotic lands overseas. Early photographers quickly realized that there was a demand for images of foreign lands and famous antiquities.
Travels In Italy will feature vintage photographs from the TMA’s collection of some of Italy’s most popular cultural draws like The Pantheon in Rome, the canals of Venice, and the Leaning Tower of Pisa, as well as lesser known treasures such as the Piazza del Duomo in Milan and Genoa’s Interior Gallery of the Camposanta. Included will be some of the best-known names in 19th-century travel photography including Giorgio Sommer, Francis Frith, Robert Macpherson, and the Alinari studio.
Selections from Alfred Frankel’s Artists of Old Florida, 1840-1960
On view August 18, 2022 through January 16, 2023
Harry Bierce (American, 1886-1954). Hillsborough River, n.d . Oil on canvas. 14 x 18 inches. Frankel Collection.
Collector Dr. Alfred Frankel has studied and collected the paintings of early Florida artists for the past 40 years. After meeting Michael Turbeville in the 1980s, an antiques dealer based in Tampa, he started to collect relatively unknown artists capturing Florida’s untamed landscape. To date, Dr. Frankel has acquired nearly 500 works of art. His holdings not only depict Florida’s raw beauty, but the collection reveals how local artists from Miami, Tampa, Orlando and Gainesville, were influential in developing art communities across the state in the early 20th century. Poetry in Paint: The Artists of Old Tampa Bay explores artists essential to the founding of the Tampa Bay area’s creative circles and features painters such as Harry Bierce, Theodore Coe, and Belle Weeden McNeer. Dr. Frankel has extensively researched the artists in his vast collection, which has resulted in the self-publication of the books Artists of Old Florida, 1840-1960 and The Dictionary of Florida Artists.
Dawoud Bey & Carrie Mae Weems: In Dialogue is organized by the Grand Rapids Art Museum, with presenting support generously provided by MillerKnoll. Additional support is provided by Wege Foundation, Agnes Gund, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Eenhoorn, LLC.
Dawoud Bey & Carrie Mae Weems: In Dialogue brings together a focused selection of work from a period of over forty years by two of today’s most important and influential photo-based artists.
Dawoud Bey and Carrie Mae Weems, both born in 1953, came of age during a period of dramatic change in the American social landscape. Since meeting at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1976, the two artists have been intellectual colleagues and companions. Over the following five decades, Bey and Weems have explored and addressed similar themes: race, class, representation, and systems of power, creating work that is grounded in specific African American events and realities while simultaneously speaking to a multitude of human conditions. This exhibition, for the first time, brings their work together to shed light on their unique trajectories and modes of presentation, and their shared consciousness and principles.
From the outset of their careers, both Bey and Weems have operated from a deep social commitment to participate in, describe, and define culture. In seeking to express themselves fully, both artists have expanded possibilities within photography and video to address their chosen subjects. Each engaged in the material and conceptual developments in the art world that were gaining prominence beginning in the 1970s, just as their careers were developing. As Bey and Weems have continued to push their own work forward, their art and approach have inspired notable younger artists such as LaToya Ruby Frazier, Lyle Ashton Harris, Mickalene Thomas, and Hank Willis Thomas.
Both Bey and Weems create work in focused series that gives them the opportunity to fully explore their complex and layered ideas. Dawoud Bey & Carrie Mae Weems: In Dialogue is arranged in five sections that present the two artists’ work in thematic pairings, emphasizing both their mutual concerns and distinct artistic approaches.
This exhibition pairs the two artists’ work in five sections that emphasize both their distinct artistic approaches and their shared interests and concerns: Early Work, Broadening the Scope, Resurrecting Black Histories, Memorial and Requiem, and Revelations in the Landscape. Also featured in the exhibition are videos by Bey and Weems that show their approaches to the moving photographic image as an extension of their still photographic series.
Beginning with Early Work, viewers will travel through the 35mm photography Bey and Weems captured at the outset of their careers, embracing both spontaneous scenes of city life, and more quiet, domestic interactions. In Broadening the Scope, Bey and Weems begin staging their photographs — Bey capturing posed street portraits of young subjects in urban environments and Weems staging her groundbreaking, narrative-based Kitchen Table Series.
In Resurrecting Black Histories, we see the artists’ deepened interest in documenting places and moments heavy with historical importance. Bey captures safe houses and meeting sites in near darkness along the Underground Railroad of Ohio, while Weems’ somber Sea Island Series explores the African legends and folklore that was retained within the Gullah culture of the Southern United States. In Memorial and Requiem, both artists become full-fledged in their commitment to cultural documentation, paying homage to tragic historic events. In the final section, Revelations in the Landscape, the artists return to a more distanced observation, contemplating the effects of time through location. Bey revisits Harlem, now photographing the effects of gentrification in color, while Weems appears in her own shots against the ancient structures of Rome, clad all in black as she guides the viewer through age-old institutional powers abroad.
Accompanying the exhibition is an illustrated catalogue published with DelMonico Books and distributed by D.A.P. (Distributed Art Publishers, Inc.) which documents Bey and Weems’ photographs and includes scholarly essays by GRAM Chief Curator Ron Platt and National Museum of African American History & Culture Deputy Director, Kinshasa Holman Conwill, along with written reflections by both artists.
About Dawoud Bey
Portrait of Dawoud Bey by Whitten Sabbatini
Photographer Dawoud Bey’s first exhibition was presented at the Studio Museum in Harlem, in 1979. Since then, his work has been presented internationally to critical and popular acclaim. Recent large-scale exhibitions of his photographs have been presented at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Tate Modern, London. Bey’s writings on his own and others’ work are included in Dawoud Bey: Seeing Deeply and Dawoud Bey on Photographing People and Communities, and High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting 1967 – 1975. Learn more about Dawoud Bey.
About Carrie Mae Weems
Portrait of Carrie Mae Weems
Over her career, Carrie Mae Weems has created a complex body of artwork through which she explores power, class, black identity, womanhood, the historical past – and its resonance in the present moment. In addition to photography, Weems creates video, performance, and works of public art, and she organizes thematic gatherings which bring together creative thinkers across a broad array of disciplines. Her work has been exhibited across the world, at venues such as the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, the Solomon Guggenheim Museum, the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Seville, Spain, and the American Academy in Rome, Italy. Learn more about Carrie Mae Weems.
Suchitra Mattai (Guyanese, b. 1973), Alter Ego, 2020. Acrylic, embroidery floss, vintage sari, fabric, appliques, brush. 58 x 46 inches.
Two-vial perfume bottle with three-tier handle. Glass; Eastern Mediterranean; Roman Imperial period, ca. 2nd-3rd cent. ce.
6 ¾ x 2 ⅞ x 1 ¼ inches. Tampa Museum of Art, Gift of Ms. Lili Kaufmann, 2021.045.
Over the past five years the Tampa Museum of Art has received a record number of gifts to the permanent collection. The exhibition, All in Favor: New Works in the Permanent Collection, highlights the many recent works that have entered TMA’s holdings, ranging from ancient glass and bronze objects to contemporary paintings and sculptures from today’s leading artists. Artists on view include the collective assume vivid astro focus (AVAF), Christo, Jane Corrigan, Mitchell Johnson, Suchitra Mattai, Simphiwe Ndzube, Roger Palmer, Daisy Patton, Jaume Plensa, Claudia Ryan, John Scott, and others.
Collections may be described as the heart of any museum. At their best, collections should inspire museum staff and influence exhibition and education programming. More importantly, collections should reflect the community at large and create a lasting impression on visitors. It is common for museum objects to become like old friends, with visitors returning again and again to see their favorite work or artist on view. Acquisitions, or works collected by a museum, can define a museum and tell its story. These objects not only reflect the institution’s evolving vision and mission over time but also highlight socio-political events and ideologies, creative choices and nuances in artistic technique, as well as technological advances that define specific periods and genres of art.
The Tampa Museum of Art’s collection focuses on two main areas: ancient art, and modern and contemporary art. Throughout its storied history, TMA has prided itself on its growing collections. In 1986, the Museum acquired its first major collection of ancient art from the Joseph Veach Noble Collection, which continues to anchor the Museum’s Greek and Roman antiquities. The modern and contemporary art collection includes works in five major groups—painting, sculpture, prints, photography, and new media/installation art. In total, the Museum has acquired nearly 7,500 objects.
Collecting institutions such as the Tampa Museum of Art maintain strict standards of acquisition policies. While each museum’s procedures may be slightly different, the goal is to adhere to high levels of research with acute attention paid to an object’s history, its relevance to other works in the collection, as well as its needs for long-term care and conservation. Like many museums, TMA works with a Collections Committee, a dedicated group of Board and community members who review artworks recommended by curatorial staff. Each object is carefully discussed and voted on, with each assessment concluding (hopefully) with the resounding vote of approval, “All in favor, say aye.”
All in Favor: New Works in the Permanent Collection presents a select group of objects and artworks recently acquired by the Tampa Museum of Art. Over the past five years, the Museum has accepted more than 200 works of art, the majority of which have been generously gifted by the Tampa Bay area community. All in Favor looks at a mere sample of the many works that have entered the collection, with a special focus on new contemporary paintings and sculptures, as well as ancient glass and bronze pitchers. The exhibition not only celebrates the growth of TMA’s collection but the heart of its priorities—sharing our holdings with the community and fostering a new generation of collection favorites.
All in Favor 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.
On view November 11, 2021 through January 15, 2023
Bust of young man holding palm frond, Stone sculpture, Roman Syria, ca. 2nd-3rd cent. CE.
Karam Collection, USF Libraries’ Special Collections, 63
In 1998, Dr. Farid Karam and his wife Jehanne generously donated 149 objects to the Special Collections of the University of South Florida (USF) Libraries. The authentic antiquities originate from ancient Syria, Phoenicia, Egypt, Greece and the Arab world. In date, they range from the Bronze Age to the early Islamic period (ca. fifteenth-century BCE – thirteenth-century CE). The metal, stone, glass and ceramic artifacts include cosmetic and medical implements, utility vessels and oil lamps, as well as sculptures and figurines. This presentation of 58 highlights is the first time the Karam Collection of Lebanese Antiquities is on display for the general public. The selection reveals Dr. Karam’s profound interest in the diversity of ancient cultures found in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Farid Karam (1929–2018) was born in a Greek Orthodox village in northern Lebanon. After specializing in plastic surgery in Cleveland, Ohio (1961), he taught medicine at the American University of Beirut Hospital until 1976. Due to the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990) he moved to Bay Pines, Florida. In 1992, Dr. Karam was appointed Associate Professor of Plastic Surgery at the University of South Florida College of Medicine in Tampa, Florida. Before returning to Lebanon, where he continued to practice otolaryngology and facial plastic surgery, Dr. Karam donated his antiquities collection to USF. Since 1977, Dr. Karam was a member of the World Scout Foundation headed by King Carl Gustav of Sweden and received the highest medal for life achievements, the Bronze Wolf Medal. Dr. Karam passed away on March 1, 2018, in his hometown in northern Lebanon.
The Ancient Levant
The Eastern Mediterranean seaboard, also known as the Levant, which is the region of present-day Syria, Lebanon and Israel, has been inhabited since prehistoric times. Some of the oldest cities in world history were founded there. From the Bronze Age, peoples called Canaanites, Phoenicians or Philistines populated the region. The Israelites appeared in the Iron Age. They all spoke Semitic languages. Phoenicians based their wealth on trade – especially purple dye and wine as well as cedar wood and glass. They also contributed their alphabet to the development of ancient civilizations across the Mediterranean. During the early first millennium BCE, Phoenician trade colonies were established across the southwestern Mediterranean, most notably the city of Carthage. The Eastern Mediterranean coast meanwhile came under the successive spheres of influence from Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia and Persia. The Seleucids and Ptolemies, dynasties ruling from Babylon and Egypt respectively, competed for power over the region during much of the Hellenistic period (ca. 323–30 BCE). In 64 BCE, Roman rule was established and for the following four centuries, Syria became one of the richest eastern provinces of the Roman Empire. In the Mediaeval period, the region first came under the influence of the Christian Byzantine empire and then the Muslim Arab world.
On view September 30, 2021 through January 16, 2022
Etel Adnan (Lebanon). Autumn in Yosemite Valley, 1963–1964.Oil on canvas, 20 1/8 x 20 1/8 in. Collection of the Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE
Taking Shape: Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s–1980s explores mid-20th-century abstract art from North Africa, West Asia, and the Arab diaspora—a vast geographic expanse that encompasses diverse cultural, ethnic, linguistic, and religious backgrounds. Comprising nearly 80 works by artists from countries including Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Qatar, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the exhibition is drawn from the collection of the Barjeel Art Foundation based in Sharjah, UAE. Inspired by Arabia calligraphy, geometry and mathematics, Islamic decorative patterns, and spiritual practices, they expanded abstraction’s vocabulary—thus complicating its genealogies or origin and altering how we view non-objective art. The paintings, sculpture, drawings, and prints on view reflect the wide range of nonfigurative art practices that flourished in the Arab world over the course of four decades. At the Tampa Museum of Art, Taking Shape: Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s–1980s is possible thanks to a community sponsorship by Morgan Stanley. The exhibition is also supported in part by Colonial Distributing and George & Debbie Baxter in honor of Dr. Mudhafar Amin and Zahar Hadid.
Maria Friberg (Swedish, b. 1966), Almost There (#2), 2000. Dye destruction print (Cibachrome) mounted on glass. 47 x 60 inches. Tampa Museum of Art. Gift of the artist and Conner Contemporary Art, 2010.002.
The Tampa Museum of Art’s holdings in photography represents the largest collecting areas of the permanent collection. The collection now comprises more than 950 photographs and illustrates a range of processing techniques and approaches to the medium. Her World in Focus: Women Photographers from the Permanent Collection highlights important women photographers in the Museum’s collection. From the candid street photography of Dianora Niccolini to Jan Groover’s influential still life photographs, and Cindy Sherman’s iconic portraiture, the exhibition highlights key genres of post-war photography. Personal identity and reflections on place appear in the works by artists such as Maria Martinez-Cañas. The exhibition will also include the work of Berenice Abbott, Barbara Ess, Maria Friberg, Penelope Umbrico, and others.
Skyway 20/21: A Contemporary Collaboration installed at the Tampa Museum of Art. Photography by Paige Raburn.
Skyway 20/21: A Contemporary Collaboration celebrates the artists and work created in the Tampa Bay area. Launched as a triennial exhibition in 2017, this survey show is the second presentation of Skyway and is mounted collaboratively by the Tampa Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, and the Contemporary Art Museum at the University of South Florida. Skyway highlights the breadth of artistic practices in the counties served by the organizing museums: Hillsborough, Pinellas, Manatee, Sarasota, and new to the exhibition, Pasco. The exhibition will be on view simultaneously at the four museums.
Exhibiting at the Tampa Museum of Art are Jaime Aelavanthara & Amanda Sieradzki, Kim Anderson, Wendy Babcox, Janet Folsom, Samson Huang, Cassia Kite, Jason Lazarus, Jenn Miller, Sarah O’Donoghue, Herion Park, Anat Pollack, Libbi Ponce, Selina Román, John Sims, Mike Solomon, Jill Taffet, and Kirk Ke Wang.
Elena del Rivero: Home Address is a multi-venue project commemorating the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment and women’s right to vote. In honor of this milestone, artist Elena del Rivero (Spanish, b. 1949) created 19 flags to be hoisted at 19 organizations across the United States in 2020 and 2021. The flags, reminiscent of everyday stained cloth towels, prompt references to the kitchen as both a domestic and political space for female empowerment. On view across the United States, the project Home Address aims to acknowledge the local histories that shaped the broader national fight for equal rights. The artist, in collaboration with the host institution, dedicates the flag to an important woman of color in each community where immediate access to voting may not have been possible after passage of the 19th amendment.
About the Artist
Born in Valencia, Spain in 1949, Elena del Rivero is the recipient of major grants and prizes in recognition of her work. She recently received a grant from Anonymous Was a Woman (2020) and in 2019, was awarded a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Del Rivero’s work resides in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Musuem of Modern of Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain. The artist lives and works in New York City.
The presentation of Elena del Rivero: Home Address at the Tampa Museum of Art is sponsored by Todd Walker.
