Due to construction, exhibition dates are subject to change.
Southwest Florida AIDS Memorial Quilts Presented by CAN Community Health
December 1 – 3, 2022
The selection of twenty quilts on exhibition at the Tampa Museum of Art to commemorate World AIDS Day on December 1 is presented by CAN Community Health. The quilts on view were created for the Southwest Florida Community AIDS Quilt Project, which began in 1994 when several HIV+ men wanted to memorialize the friends and loved ones they had lost.
Time for Change: Art and Social Unrest in the Jorge M. Pérez Collection
On view now through March 12, 2023
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 2020 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.
Exhibition Sponsor: Gobioff Foundation
Poetry in Paint: The Artists of Old Tampa Bay
Selections from Alfred Frankel’s Artists of Old Florida, 1840-1960
On view now through January 23, 2023
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.
Contributor Sponsor: Brown & Brown Insurance
All in Favor: New Works in the Permanent Collection
On view now through July 23, 2023
All in Favor: New Works in the Permanent Collection presents a select group of objects and artworks recently acquired by TMA. 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 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 Museum’s 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.
Purvis Young: Redux
On view now through June 30, 2024
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. In 2004, the Rubell Family Foundation gifted 91 artworks to the Tampa Museum of Art by Young (American, 1943-2010). Based in the Overtown neighborhood of Miami, Florida, 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. 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. Although his means were limited, Young was recognized throughout Miami, and now across the globe, for his remarkable painting practice and his contributions to the cultural landscape of South Florida.
Highlights from the Karam Collection
On view now through January 2023
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 sculpture 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.
Prelude: An Introduction to the Permanent Collection
On view now
Prelude: An Introduction to the Permanent Collection presents the Tampa Museum of Art’s main collecting areas in ancient, modern, and contemporary art. The exhibition features artworks exploring themes of site, power, and the body in ancient vessels, tools, and jewelry, as well as sculptures, painting, and photography. Viewed together in dialogue with each other, the objects speak to shared experiences across time and place. An ongoing exhibition, Prelude includes both familiar works and recent additions to the permanent collection.
Air Fer Mer: Dominique Labauvie
On view now
Artist Dominique Labauvie (French, b. 1948) unites language, both his native French and English, with image in his architectonic steel sculptures. Although his medium of industrial steel suggests a sense of permanence, Labauvie aims to capture fleeting moments in his sculpture—from the movement of light and shadows, to the passage of time and life unfolding around us. “Air Fer Mer” also translates to iron, air, sea—a fitting description of the objects’ relationship to the natural world. In this unique setting, three of Labauvie’s sculptures exist in harmony with the Hillsborough River and Tampa skyline.
© Jaume Plensa. Courtesy Galerie Lelong, New York
Laura with Bun
On view now
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.