Category: Past Exhibitions

On view through October 25, 2020

Since photography’s inception in the mid-nineteenth century, women have stood among its artistic and technological pioneers. Modern Women: Modern Vision features 100 works from the Bank of America Collection by leading artists of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The exhibition is organized in six thematic sections: Modernist Innovators, Documentary Photography and the New Deal, Photo League, Modern Masters, Exploring the Environment, and The Global Contemporary Lens. Each section examines the photographers’ role in forging new directions and methods in photography, as well as how the medium has evolved with the advent of new digital and studio practices.  Artists featured in this exhibition include Berenice Abbott, Diane Arbus, Tina Barney, Bernd Becher and Hilla Becher, Margaret Bourke-White, Esther Bubley, Imogen Cunningham, Rineke Dijkstra, Candida Höfer, Barbara Kruger, Dorothea Lange, Nikki S. Lee, Helen Levitt, Sonia Handelman Meyer, DoDo Jin Ming, Ruth Orkin, Cindy Sherman, Carrie Mae Weems, and others.

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On view October 22, 2020 through May 9, 2021

Representations of the body vary from person to person, artist to artist. The works featured in Figure Forward: Selections from the Permanent Collection demonstrate different approaches to figuration from the 18^th-century to the present through the Tampa Museum of Art’s permanent collection. Portraiture and figuration anchor the modern and contemporary collection, with works in a range of media by artists such as Jose Clemente Orozco, Francisco Goya, Louise Nevelson, Fairfield Porter, Lorna Simpson, and Rafael Soyer. The exhibition also highlights recent acquisitions by Alex Katz, Yigal Ozeri, and Pepe Mar. Figure Forward expands on the figurative work included in the show The Making of a Museum: 100 Years, 100 Works.

Figure Forward: Selections from the Permanent Collection is part of the Tampa Museum of Art’s centennial exhibition series Celebrating 100 Years.

On view through September 27, 2020

In conjunction with Frank Stella: Illustrations after El Lissitzky’s Had Gadya, the Tampa Museum of Art has organized Frank Stella: What You See, a pendant exhibition featuring works by Frank Stella in regional collections, including the Tampa Museum of Art’s permanent collection. The exhibition is inspired by Stella’s quote “What you see is what you see,” the artist’s famed description of his art as noted in a 1964 interview. The intimate selection of works provides an overview of Stella’s oeuvre from his exploration of minimal forms in the 1960s and 1970s, to the creation of lyrical multi-media compositions in the late 1990s. Frank Stella: What You See presents a snapshot view of one of today’s most influential living artists.

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On view through September 27, 2020

Frank Stella (American, b. 1936) created the series Illustrations after El Lissitzky’s Had Gadya (1984) after seeing artist El Lissitzky’s artwork at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Between 1917 and 1919, Lissitzky (Russian, 1890-1941) completed imagery for a children’s book of “Had Gadya”, an allegorical song sung at the close of the Passover Seder. Lissitzky’s modernist interpretation of the traditional song highlighted the influence of the Russian avant-garde in his work, as he depicted characters and scenes in “Had Gadya” with abstract forms and interlocking geometric shapes. Inspired by Lissitzky’s “Had Gadya”, Stella produced a suite of prints corresponding to the artist’s imagery. Rather than re-interpret the song, Stella responded to Lissitzky’s abstractions with his own signature vibrant palette and curvilinear gestures. The exhibition features Stella’s complete portfolio of twelve prints, each unique in technique and color.

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On view September 12 through November 10, 2019

Jean-Michel Basquiat: One Master Artist / Two Masterpieces focuses on two unique Basquiat artworks: Yellow Door (1985) and Untitled (Word on Wood) (1985). The exhibition will examine the artist’s visual vocabulary in an intimate presentation of these two important paintings. Jean-Michel Basquiat: One Master Artist / Two Masterpieces explores the artist’s use of found materials, text, and portraiture as a means to explore socio-political themes and self-identity. Related materials will further address how Basquiat’s art signified new directions in abstract figuration and 20th-century painting. This show is part of the fall exhibition series Ordinary/Extraordinary: Assemblage in Three Acts.

The exhibition Jean-Michel Basquiat: One Master Artist / Two Masterpieces is part of the exhibition series Ordinary/Extraordinary: Assemblage in Three Acts. The series simultaneously presents three discrete shows focused on works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Purvis Young, and a selection of 20th- and 21st-century Haitian Vodou flags. The use of found objects, such as discarded wood and textiles, formally links the exhibitions together. More importantly, historical and socio-economic narratives informed by the Afro-Caribbean Diaspora, the Black experience in America, as well as European artistic influences, unite the artists featured in the series. Although each is a stand-alone show, viewed together, the series explores provocative portrayals of race, identity, spirituality, survival, and hope in a range of assemblage objects and compositions.

On view September 12, 2019 through January 26, 2020

The exhibition Purvis Young: 91 presents for the first time the depth of the Purvis Young (American, 1943-2010) holdings in the Tampa Museum of Art’s permanent collection. In 2004, the Rubell Family Foundation gifted 91 works by Young to the Museum, one of the largest donations of the artist’s work in the Southeast. Young, a self-taught artist, created thousands of assemblages with imagery of protesters, pregnant women, and warriors on wood remnants, cabinets, and doors. The artworks reflect Young’s experiences and observations living in Overtown, Miami.

Purvis Young: 91 is part of the exhibition series Ordinary/Extraordinary: Assemblage in Three Acts. The series simultaneously presents three discrete shows focused on works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Purvis Young, and a selection of 20th- and 21st-century Haitian Vodou flags. The use of found objects, such as discarded wood and textiles, formally links the exhibitions together. More importantly, historical and socio-economic narratives informed by the Afro-Caribbean Diaspora, the Black experience in America, as well as European artistic influences, unite the artists featured in the series. Although each is a stand-alone show, viewed together, the series explores provocative portrayals of race, identity, spirituality, survival, and hope in a range of assemblage objects and compositions.

On view September 12, 2019 through February 23, 2020

Sacred Diagrams: Haitian Vodou Flags from the Gessen Collection examines the tradition and artistry of Haitian Vodou flags. Often made of discarded burlap bags, repurposed fabric, beads, and sequins, Vodou flags represent Haiti’s spiritually rich yet often misunderstood Vodou religion. Guest curator and artist Edouard Duval-Carrié (Haitian, b. 1954) examines the role of Vodou flags and flagmakers within Haiti’s dynamic visual culture. Sacred Diagrams highlights vintage ceremonial flags from the 1950s and 1960s, as well as explores recent interpretations of Vodou flags by artists Clotaire Bazile, Myrlande Constant, Mireille Delice Delisme, Silva Joseph, Dubreus Lherisson, Edgar Jean Louis, Antoine Oleyant, Yves Telemaque, and George Valris.

This exhibition is part the exhibition series Ordinary/Extraordinary: Assemblage in Three Acts. The series simultaneously presents three discrete shows focused on works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Purvis Young, and a selection of 20th- and 21st-century Haitian Vodou flags. The use of found objects, such as discarded wood and textiles, formally links the exhibitions together. More importantly, historical and socio-economic narratives informed by the Afro-Caribbean Diaspora, the Black experience in America, as well as European artistic influences, unite the artists featured in the series. Although each is a stand-alone show, viewed together, the series explores provocative portrayals of race, identity, spirituality, survival, and hope in a range of assemblage objects and compositions.

On view August 9, 2019 through January 5, 2020

One of the 20th century’s most influential artists, Robert Rauschenberg (American, 1925-2008) defined his oeuvre by using ordinary, non-traditional materials to create distinct works of art. His “combines” hovered between painting and sculpture, and incorporated a range of media and techniques. Rauschenberg often used photography in his work and layered images to render provocative narratives or observations about the world around him. Suite 1 from (America Mix-16), 1983, a portfolio of 16 photogravures, features photographs of found vignettes or objects Rauschenberg encountered during his travels around the US. He found beauty in the mundane, such as a dilapidated rag hanging from the gas cap of an abandoned truck or the inadvertent still life of trashed objects resting on the curb. Rarely exhibited from the Tampa Museum of Art’s collection, the entirety of this portfolio will be on view.

On view June 20 through October 20, 2019

Tableau and Transformation presents an overview of the Tampa Museum of Art’s holdings in 20th-century photography, a cornerstone of the Museum’s permanent collection. The exhibition looks at how artists have used distinct darkroom effects and studio practices to create new narratives in photography.  Artists such as James Casebere, Robert Cumming, Stephen Frailey, Sandy Skoglund, and William Wegman create constructed environments, often blurring the boundaries of truth and fiction in their images. Photographers Blythe Bohnen, Duane Michals, Arnulf Rainer, Lucas Samaras, Cindy Sherman examine the transformation of one’s self as a means to explore identity, gender, and place.

This exhibition features approximately 50 photographs with objects ranging in date from the mid-1960s to through the early 2000s. Predominately drawn from the Museum’s permanent collection, Tableau and Transformation includes artists John Baldessari, Morton Bartlett, Zeke Berman, Blythe Bohnen, Victor Burgin, James Casebere, Eileen Cowin, Robert Cumming, Robert Fichter, Stephen Frailey, Les Krims, Duane Michals, Patrick Nagatani and Andreé Tracey, Arnulf Rainer, Richard Ross, Lucas Samaras, Andres Serrano, Cindy Sherman, Sandy Skoglund, Joel Sternfeld, and William Wegman. Tableau and Transformation also features key loans from Trenam Law’s photography collection and includes companion photographs by several of the above-mentioned artists, as well as Laurie Simmons and Doug and Mike Starn.

As the Tampa Museum of Art nears its 100th anniversary, exhibitions in 2019 and 2020 focus on the breadth of the institution’s permanent collection, as well as examine its collecting history. The Tampa Museum of Art’s holdings are unique, with collections of Greek and Roman antiquities, as well as modern and contemporary art.