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.
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.
Alma Thomas (American, 1891-1978), New Galaxy, 1970. Acrylic on canvas. 54 1/4 x 54 inches. Tampa Museum of Art, Gift of Douglas H. Teller in memory of Julian H. Singman, 1997.017.
As the Tampa Museum of Art nears its 100th anniversary, exhibitions in 2019 and 2020 will 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 distinct collections of Greek and Roman antiquities, as well as modern and contemporary art.
Echoing Forms: American Abstraction from the Permanent Collection presents paintings, works on paper, and photography by major artists associated with post-war American abstraction. Abstract Expressionism emerged as the dominant genre of painting in the mid-1940s. For the next 40 years, artists working across media would examine and redefine the boundaries of abstraction. From Robert Motherwell’s serial compositions of repeating ovoid and geometric forms, to the patterned brushwork of Alma Thomas, and Aaron Siskind’s photographic studies of found objects echoing gestural paint strokes, the Tampa Museum of Art’s collection includes work from influential artists associated with the rise of American abstraction.
Artists featured in Echoing Forms also include Joseph Albers, Helen Frankenthaler, Adolph Gottlieb, Ellsworth Kelly, Elaine de Kooning, Kenneth Noland, Frank Stella, and others. Echoing Forms: Abstraction from the Permanent Collection is a companion show to the special exhibition Abstract Expressionism: A Social Revolution.
Abstract Expressionism: A Social Revolution, Selections from the Haskell Collection, presents twenty-five works from the Haskell Collection indicative of Abstract Expressionism as a unifying direction in Post-World War II art. The exhibition highlights artists associated with the influential first and second generations of Abstract Expressionist painters including Willem de Kooning, Hans Hofmann, Helen Frankenthaler, Franz Kline, Morris Louis, Joan Mitchell, Robert Motherwell, Kenneth Noland, Mark Rothko, and Theodoros Stamos. Later works by Gerhard Richter, Jack Goldstein, Robert Rauschenberg, and Frank Stella respond or reflect on the lasting legacy of Abstract Expressionism in both the US and abroad. Viewed together, the works in Abstract Expressionism: A Social Revolution address how individual artistic expression and independence from institutional values altered the course of painting. In this exhibition, visual vocabulary will be discussed in relationship to the artists’ collective objectives and individual intentions.
In addition to those mentioned above, artists represented in Abstract Expressionism: A Social Revolution include Josef Albers, Richard Anuszkiewicz, Karel Appel, Sam Francis, Michael Goldberg, Paul Jenkins, Jean Miotte, Judy Pfaff, Jean-Paul Riopelle, James Rosenquist, and Jack Tworkov. Unless noted otherwise, all works from the Haskell Collection.
Oswaldo Vigas (Venezuelan, 1923-2014), Bruja infante (Infant Witch), 1951. Oil on canvas. 39 ¼ x 22 ½ inches. Courtesy of the Oswaldo Vigas Foundation.
Oswaldo Vigas: Transformations presents the first American survey of artist Oswaldo Vigas (Venezuelan, 1923-2014). Organized by the Grand Rapids Art Museum, the exhibition examines Vigas’ influential career and his contributions to 20th-century modernism. A prolific artist, Vigas found inspiration in both the natural landscape of his native Venezuela and the European avant-garde. Oswaldo Vigas: Transformations focuses on works created between 1940 and 1980, and demonstrates the evolution of Vigas’ distinct artistic style. In the late 1940s, Vigas focused on figurative abstraction and created his vibrant series of Bruja (or witch) paintings. Cubism and constructivism influenced Vigas and by the 1950s, he shifted away from figuration and moved towards geometric abstraction. The works on view illustrate the scope of Vigas’ projects, from studio painter to muralist, and highlight the importance of his creative achievements.
Born in 1923 in Valencia, Venezuela, Vigas studied medicine at Universidad de los Andes (ULA) in Mérida, Venezuela. In the 1950s, he gave up his medical practice to focus on his artwork. Vigas spent the next decade working and exhibiting his work in Paris, France. Vigas is celebrated as one of Latin America’s preeminent 20th-century painters, alongside artists such as Roberto Burle Marx, Wifredo Lam, and Rufino Tamayo. Vigas’ work has been featured in exhibitions around the globe and resides in prominent private and museum collections including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Art Museum of the Americas. Vigas passed away in 2014 in Caracas, Venezuela.
Michael Pavlik (Czechoslovakian, b. 1941), Gate to Blue Illusion, 1995. Cut, polished, and laminated glass. 12 ½ x 16 x 12 inches. Tampa Museum of Art Gift of Dr. Richard and Barbara Basch, 2004.045.002.
As the Tampa Museum of Art celebrates its 100th anniversary, exhibitions in 2019 and 2020 will 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 distinct collections of Greek and Roman antiquities, as well as modern and contemporary art.
A Closer Look: Ancient Glass from the Permanent Collection
Drawn primarily from the permanent collection, A Closer Look: Ancient Glass includes examples of ancient Greek and Roman glass vessels made in a range of ancient techniques. The objects on view help to illustrate the development of glass production in the classical world over a period of nearly one thousand years, from the fourth century BC to the fourth or fifth century AD.
Shards and Illusions: Contemporary Glass from the Permanent Collection
Shards and Illusions: Contemporary Glass from the Permanent Collection features a selection of contemporary glass by American and European artists Jon Kuhn, John Luebtow, Steven Maslach, Michael Pavlik, Louis Sclafani, Lino Tagliapietra, and Toots Zynsky. This intimate presentation focuses on architectural and abstract forms within the Tampa Museum of Art’s unique holdings in glass.
Left Image: Greek, Oinochoe (Jug), 4th century BC. Glass (core-formed); H. 3 ¾ inches (9.5 cm). Tampa Museum of Art, Joseph Veach Noble Collection, 1986.153.
Right Image: Jon Kuhn (American, b. 1949), Rainbow Bloom, 1992. Glass. 9 3/4 inches. cube. Tampa Museum of Art, Gift of Jan Gordon, Ken Dickson, Michael Dickson, Robert Dickson, Harvey Gortner, and Terri Kenefsky in memory of Will and Bettie Gortner, 2001.036.
This exhibition explores the more than five-decade career of one of America’s most beloved artists, Robert Indiana (American, 1928–2018). A selective survey of Indiana’s sculpture, it also includes numerous paintings, prints, and drawings, highlighting how Indiana’s thinking in visual form crossed different media.
This quintessentially American artist returned frequently to autobiographical motifs, symbols, and imagery, often after many decades of quiet reflection and rumination, building a corpus of work that ever more meaningfully reflected what it meant to be an American artist—and what it meant to be Robert Indiana—as the years passed. While LOVE will likely always remain the artist’s greatest contribution in the public imagination, his work beyond and apart from this memorable image places Indiana among the great American artists of the second half of the twentieth century. This exhibition introduces lesser-known late works—the Vinalhaven Woods, bronze editions of sculptures from different eras in his career, and the never-before shown marble LOVEs—to make the case for the breadth and import of Indiana’s achievement.
This exhibition is organized by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY.
The Tampa Museum of Art is pleased to present Yayoi Kusama’s LOVE IS CALLING, one of the artist’s iconic Infinity Rooms, on loan from the Vinik Family Foundation Collection. An immersive, experiential work of art, LOVE IS CALLING invites visitors to enter a mirrored room with tentacle-like soft sculptures hanging from the ceiling and positioned on the floor. These forms glow with changing colors and feature Kusama’s signature polka dots. Mirrored walls create a kaleidoscopic effect, with the reflected imagery of the tentacles seemingly extending into infinite space. Visitors hear audio of the artist reciting a love poem in Japanese as they walk throughout the installation.
Yayoi Kusama (Japanese, b. 1929) is one of today’s most recognized and celebrated artists. In addition to her widely popular Infinity Rooms, such as LOVE IS CALLING, Kusama creates vibrant paintings, works on paper, and sculpture with abstract imagery. Her artwork has been shown and collected by leading institutions across the globe and she is considered “the world’s most popular artist.” A comprehensive retrospective, organized by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, is currently traveling around the US and Canada. In October 2017, the Yayoi Kusama Museum opened in Tokyo. The artist lives and works in Tokyo.
Patricia Cronin (American, b. 1963), Memorial to a Marriage, 2002. Carrara marble; 27 x 47 x 84 inches (68.6 x 119.4 x 213.4 cm). Courtesy of Patricia Cronin Studio, Image courtesy of the artist.
Patricia Cronin, Aphrodite, and the Lure of Antiquity: Conversations with the Collection is the inaugural exhibition in a biennial series exploring synergy between collections that may initially strike visitors as wholly separate from one another – namely, classical antiquities and modern and contemporary art. Patricia Cronin (American, b. 1963) is an internationally recognized Brooklyn-based artist uniquely positioned for such a visual conversation. Winner of a Rome Prize in Visual Art in 2006-2007, and past Trustee of the American Academy in Rome, Cronin is deeply interested in the ancient world, which she frequently references in her work. For the first commission in our biennial series, Cronin has created a large outdoor sculpture of Aphrodite inspired by a fragmentary 1st-century AD marble torso of Aphrodite in the Museum’s collection. Entitled Aphrodite Reimagined, Cronin’s sculpture re-envisions the Museum’s Aphrodite fragment as a monumental “complete” sculpture with a stone torso and translucent head, arms, and legs. The sculpture invites viewers to reconsider the narrative of an ancient work heavily restored after its rediscovery, and acts as a metaphor for shifting certainties about human history. Cronin and Museum curators will also pair an Etruscan cinerary urn from the Museum’s collection with multiple iterations of Cronin’s 2002 sculpture Memorial to a Marriage, a powerful artwork that references ancient and neoclassical funerary monuments as well as contemporary issues of social justice. The final gallery of the exhibition will comprise a visual dialogue between figural works by Cronin and several antiquities from the Museum’s permanent collection.
Attributed to the Darius Painter, South Italian, Apulian, Fragment from a Red-Figure Volute Krater (Mixing Vessel) with the Judgment of Paris, ca. 380-370 BC. Ceramic. Tampa Museum of Art, Joseph Veach Noble Collection, 1986.105.
Contests, combat, and commemoration played important and often interrelated roles in ancient art, life, and culture. This small exhibition, drawn primarily from the Museum’s permanent collection, explores a number of these connections within both mythological and historical contexts. Altogether, some eighty works of Greek, Roman, Etruscan, and Egyptian art are included, ranging from the sixth century BC to the fourth century AD, and from painted pottery to sculpture in terracotta, bronze, and stone.
