Tampa Museum of Art

Tribal Affinities and Body of Work: Artist Lecture with José Bedia
2025-06-08 13:30 - 14:30 (America/New_York) | Tampa Museum of Art, 120 W Gasparilla Plaza, Tampa, FL, 33602, United States
Tribal Affinities and Body of Work: Artist Lecture with José Bedia
Join us for a lecture with José Bedia, an artist featured in the exhibition Under the Spell of the Palm Tree: The Rice Collection of Cuban Art. The presentation will cover Jose Bedia’s main artistic influences, spanning from different native and tribal communities throughout the world, and will also show the resulting works and creations from these ‘field work’ investigations. Personal examples and images of trips, as well as works directly made after these journeys will be seen and discussed.
Lectures are offered:

Art+ Museum Members: Free
Not-Yet-Members: $25
College Students: Free

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“Bedia MoMA Magazine” – credit Photo by: Oriol Tarridas
José Bedia (Cuban, b. 1959) has been a leading figure in transforming contemporary Cuban art for over three decades. His role in the landmark 1981 exhibition Volumen Uno marked the beginning of a radical shift in the island’s artistic landscape. Since then, Bedia’s work has garnered international acclaim, from his inclusion in the influential 1989 exhibition Magiciens de la Terre in Paris to receiving First Prize at the Beijing Biennale in 2010.
His work is represented in major private and public collections, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; the Tate Modern, London; and Pérez Art Museum Miami. In recognition of his career, the Fowler Museum in Los Angeles presented a 30-year retrospective of his work.
Bedia’s art draws from his deep interest in tribal cultures and ethnography, which is informed by a fieldwork-based approach. His practice weaves together layered narratives that connect social, spiritual, and historical traditions from around the world.

Image Caption: José Bedia (Cuban, b. 1959) Más de lo mismo y uno de necio (More of the Same and One being Foolish), 2000. Ink, conte crayon, white chalk, and pastel on amate paper. Framed: 50 x 97 x 4 inches. The Rice Collection

Ancient Athenian Ceramics: Through the Eyes of a Conservator
2025-09-14 14:00 - 15:00 | FL
Ancient Athenian Ceramics: Through the Eyes of a Conservator
In 1965, Joseph Veach Noble’s book The Techniques of Painted Attic Pottery transformed the study of painted ceramics from ancient Athens. His careful examination of the structures and surfaces of these renowned and iconic objects continues to be one of the most cited scholarly references even today. In the sixty years since that publication, new scientific and technical insights have both enhanced and challenged Noble’s study, bringing us even closer to the craft, creativity and technical genius of the potters and painters who produced ceramics in Athens thousands of years ago. This lecture re-examines Noble’s work, this time by looking through the eyes of a conservator. New perspectives from the fields of experimental archaeology, materials science and art conservation allow us to glimpse the working lives of these ancient makers with even more clarity than before. Integrating these innovative new understandings of the ancient potters’ and painters’ artistic expertise and technical know-how also lets us see this broad range of ancient people in their fuller humanity.
Lectures are offered free with the cost of daily admission:

Art+ Museum Members: Free
Not-Yet-Members: $25
College Students: Free

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Sanchita Balachandran is the director of the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute (MCI), a national research center dedicated to the preservation of cultural heritage. She is an art conservator whose research explores how the technical study and conservation of archaeological items brings us closer to the lived experiences of ancient people. Before joining the Smithsonian in 2024, Balachandran was Director of the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum and Associate Teaching Professor at Johns Hopkins University. She earned a bachelor’s degree in art history from Pomona College, a master’s degree in art history and an advanced certificate in art conservation from New York University, and a doctorate in preservation studies from the University of Delaware. Balachandran is a fellow of the American Institute for Conservation (AIC) and the recipient of the AIC’s Rutherford Gettens Award for outstanding service. Her research has been recognized through a James Marsden Fitch Residency at the American Academy in Rome; the Bard Graduate Center’s Iris Outstanding Mid-Career Scholar Award; a Conservation Guest Scholar residency at the Getty Conservation Institute, and a Fulbright Award to India.

Image Caption: Woman with Oil Flask at Tomb (detail). White-ground lekythos (ceramic oil flask); attributed to the Inscription Painter; Attica, Greece; Archaic period, ca. 460-450 BCE. Tampa Museum of Art, Joseph Veach Noble Collection, Museum Purchase in part with funds donated in memory of Dorothy M. Mosely, 1986.079

Mermaids, Ancestors & Saints: The Dynamism of Myrlande Constant’s Haitian Vodou Ritual Flags
2025-10-23 18:00 - 19:00 | Tampa Museum of Art, 120 W Gasparilla Plaza, Tampa, FL, 33602, United States
Lecture: Mermaids, Ancestors & Saints: The Dynamism of Myrlande Constant’s Haitian Vodou Ritual Flags
Haitian artist Myrlande Constant’s remarkable Vodou drapo (ritual flags) depict spirits socializing together as Milokan, when the totality of their powers are combined. In this lecture, we explore several pertinent themes of Constant’s drapo including mermaids and aquatic beings, ancestors and spirits of the dead, and Catholic saints reimagined as Haitian spirits. Special attention will be focused on the flags housed at the Tampa Museum of Art.
Sponsored by Muriel Brathwaite
Lectures are offered free with the cost of daily admission:

Art+ Museum Members: Free
Not-Yet-Members: $25
College Students: Free

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Click here to join the livestream on YouTube
230328- DECATUR- GA- Emory Dept of African American Studies headshots on the quad, March 28, 2023 (Beckysteinphotography.com)
Dr. Kyrah Malika Daniels is Assistant Professor of African American Studies at Emory University. She completed her B.A. in Africana Studies at Stanford University and received her M.A. in Religion and her Ph.D. in African & African American Studies at Harvard University. Her research interests include Africana religions; sacred arts and material culture; and race, religion and visual culture. Her first book (Art of the Healing Gods, Duke University Press 2026) is a comparative religion project that examines religious artifacts used in Haitian and Congolese traditional healing ceremonies. In 2019, she was selected as a Getty/ACLS Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of Art.
Between 2009-2010, Daniels served as Junior Curator at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. Deeply invested in the digital humanities, she curates a student-led research platform called Africana Art Scholars and participates in initiatives like the UCLA Fowler Museum’s Vital Matters series. Her work has been published in the Journal of Africana Religions, the Journal of Haitian Studies, and the Journal for the American Academy of Religion. Daniels currently serves a Leadership Council Member for the African and Diasporic Religious Studies Association (ADRSA) and as Vice President for KOSANBA, a Scholarly Association for the Study of Haitian Vodou.
Image Caption: Myrlande Constant (Haitian, b. 1968), Ague Taroyo, 2007. Sequins and beads on cloth. 45 x 53 inches. Collection of Ed and Ann Gessen.

Virtual Lecture - Ta Megala Theria: Heavy Metal Music’s Reception of Mythological Adversaries
2025-11-04 18:00 - 19:00 | Tampa Museum of Art, 120 W Gasparilla Plaza, Tampa, FL, 33602, United States
Virtual Lecture – Ta Megala Theria: Heavy Metal Music’s Reception of Mythological Adversaries
Transgressive and oppositional figures have always exercised fascination and admiration in heavy metal music, from Ozzy the Prince of Darkness to the Devil himself. While the genre has traditionally signaled its rebellious ethos within a Christian paradigm through satanic themes and imagery, more and more bands have embraced analogous elements from pre-Christian mythologies of the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. Primordial, chaotic, and chthonic antagonists such as Apophis, Tiamat, and Typhon resonate as embodiments of the metal underground and its antipathy to the latter-day sky gods, i.e. the established institutions of order, conformity, and control. Heavy metal not merely retells their myths, but even creates new versions where they ultimately triumph.
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Jeremy Swist is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Romance & Classical Studies at Michigan State University, having earned his PhD in Classics from the University of Iowa. He has published research on pagan prose authors under the later Roman Empire, including the emperor Julian in his new book Julian Augustus: Platonism, Myth, and the Refounding of Rome with Oxford University Press. He also studies, organizes conferences, and now teaches college courses on the prolific reception of ancient Greece, Rome, and Byzantium in heavy metal music.

Image Caption: Typhon (detail). Bronze applique; Etruria, Italy; Archaic period, ca. 500-480 BCE. TAMPA MUSEUM OF ART, BEQUEST FROM THE ESTATE OF DR. RICHARD E. AND MRS. MARY B. PERRY, 2022.006

Sunday Session: American Impressionism in Focus
2025-11-16 13:00 - 14:00 | Tampa Museum of Art, 120 W Gasparilla Plaza, Tampa, FL, 33602, United States
Sunday Session: American Impressionism in Focus
Join Joanna Robotham, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, for a dynamic conversation connecting two exhibitions: In a New Light: American Impressionism 1870-1940 Works form the Bank of America Collection, and American Gaze: Impressionism – Paintings from Tampa Bay Collections. Explore captivating paintings from both national and local collections in this engaging program.
Lectures are offered free with the cost of daily admission:

Art+ Museum Members: Free
Not-Yet-Members: $25
College Students: Free

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Image Caption: Childe Hassam (American, 1859–1935), Old House, East Hampton, 1917. Oil on linen. Framed: 28 3/8 x 38 ¼ inches. Bank of America Collection.

SOLD OUT - Artist Conversation: Judy Dater
2025-12-09 18:30 - 19:30 | Tampa Museum of Art, 120 W Gasparilla Plaza, Tampa, FL, 33602, United States
Artist Conversation: Judy Dater
Join us for an enlightening program with renowned photographer and artist Judy Dater, whose work is featured in Focal Point: The David Hall Photography Collection. In conversation with Joanna Robotham, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Tampa Museum of Art, Dater will reflect on her artistic practice and her friendship with prolific collector David Hall.
Lectures are offered free with the cost of daily admission:

Art+ Museum Members: Free
Not-Yet-Members: $25
College Students: Free

This program is sold out.
Co. Jack von Euw
Photographer and Artist Judy Dater has been a major figure contributing to Photography’s breakout moment in the 1960s. Over the years her intimate and insightful portraits and nudes have influenced and inspired a generation of photographers. Her work has been exhibited world-wide and is held in numerous important collections. She is the author of several books including Women and Other Visions with Jack Welpott, 1975, Imogen Cunningham: A Portrait, 1979, Judy Dater: 20 Years, 1986 Cycles, 1992, and Only Human, 2018.
She studied art at UCLA from 1959 to 1962 before moving to San Francisco and received a bachelor’s degree in 1963 and a master’s degree in 1966, both from San Francisco State University. Judy Dater uses photography as an instrument for challenging traditional conceptions of the female body. Her early work paralleled the emergence of the feminist movement, and her work became strongly associated with it. Dater began taking photographs in the 1960s and she is still taking photographs today. She has been the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation grant for a residency at Bellagio, a Djerassie Artist in Residence grant and two National Endowment for the Arts Grants.

Image Caption: Judy Dater (American, b. 1941), Self-Portrait at Salt Flats, 1981, Gelatin silver print. David Hall Collection.

You Can’t Step Into The Same River Twice: Carol Mickett, Robert Stackhouse, and Charles Atlas
2026-03-26 18:00 - 19:00 | Tampa Museum of Art, 120 W Gasparilla Plaza, Tampa, FL, 33602, United States
You Can’t Step Into The Same River Twice:
Carol Mickett, Robert Stackhouse, and Charles Atlas
Time changes everything: the natural world, the human world, and our perception. For the contemporary world, the question is how can we ensure that “the river” keeps flowing and remains healthy? Carol Mickett and Robert Stackhouse make art about water and highlight the unperceived ways in which the natural world enhances the human world and mitigates the consequences of our way of life. Their talk will merge art and science through a visual journey of their collaborative work. The talk will conclude with a conversation with curator Joanna Robotham about the overlapping themes of their work and that of Charles Atlas’ installation Kiss the Day Goodbye.
Lectures are offered free with the cost of daily admission:

Art+ Museum Members: Free
Not-Yet-Members: $25
College Students: Free

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Carol Mickett and Robert Stackhouse are a collaborative art team. They make 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional art focused on water, climate, and ways members of the natural world mitigate the consequences of contemporary life. Museums, private collectors, developers, and governments collect and commission their work. Their show Circle of Water inaugurated the Florida Wildlife Corridor Gallery, Wild Space. They were Artists-At-Sea aboard the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s ocean-research vessel Falkor and participated in the exhibition Artist At Sea during Art Basel Miami Beach at the Patricia Frost Museum of Science sponsored by UNESCO, Schmidt Ocean Institute, and Nautilus. WEDU’s (FL Public Television) 8-part YouTube and broadcast digital series, High Water Marks, “explores how their art and activism intersect to bring awareness and understanding to issues facing our environment.” They received an NEA grant (via Creative Pinellas) for their community project Cool Pinellas and were included in Skyway 2024 at the Ringling Museum of Art. Their art collaboration is enhanced by their individual accomplishments. Carol Mickett holds a Ph.D. in philosophy and worked for over a decade in academia. She has published essays, poems, and interviews. Carol was the host/curator of the on-going series Our Town at the Dali Museum and the Art Laureate Conversations for Creative Pinellas and was host/producer of Art Radio in Kansas City, MO. Robert Stackhouse earned his B.A. from USF, holds an MA in art from the University of Maryland and an honorary doctorate from University of South Florida. His individual work can be found in museum collections around the world including the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery in Washington, DC, and The National Gallery of Australia among others. Stackhouse’s work is currently in the Ringling Museum of Art’s exhibition As Earth is to Sky.

Image Caption: Charles Atlas (American, b. 1949), Kiss the Day Goodbye, 2015. Two channel video installation with color and sound. Running time: 19 minutes, 15 seconds. Courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York. Installation view at the Tampa Museum of Art. Photography by Paige Boscia.

Lecture - Faces of Power: Stories Behind Portraits on Greek and Roman Coins
2026-04-12 14:00 - 15:00 | Tampa Museum of Art, 120 W Gasparilla Plaza, Tampa, FL, 33602, United States
Faces of Power: Stories Behind Portraits on Greek and Roman Coins
Ancient Greek and Roman coins preserve some of the most widespread portraits from antiquity, showing how rulers wanted to be seen by their people and how artistic styles changed over the centuries. As the main way ordinary people saw the faces of kings, emperors, and rulers, coins remain key evidence for understanding ancient propaganda, political symbols, and portrait styles. The relevance of this topic clear by the debate today about who should appear on modern currency, from Queen Elizabeth II to proposals for a coin showing a portrait of President Trump.
Lectures are offered free with the cost of daily admission:

Art+ Museum Members: Free
Not-Yet-Members: $25
College Students: Free

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Ute Wartenberg is the Sydney F. Martin Executive Director of the American Numismatic Society (ANS). During her time at the ANS, the institution has grown into one of the world’s leading numismatic institutions, with an outstanding team of researchers and staff. A Rhodes Scholar, she earned her D.Phil. in Classics from Oxford.
A distinguished scholar and prolific author specializing in ancient Greek coinage, Wartenberg served as Curator of Greek Coins at the British Museum (1991–1998) before joining ANS. She has taught at Oxford University and Columbia University and lectured across Europe and the US. Her curatorial work includes numerous exhibitions, most recently “When Coinage was born.” Treasures from Zhuyuetang Collection, which opened at the Casa de la Moneda in Madrid in 2025. Her current research projects involve a monograph on Persian coinage, the publication of Electrum Coins in the Hellenic National Museum in Athens, and the publication of the excavation coins of the Kerameikos in Athens (with Selene Psoma).
Wartenberg chaired the US Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee (2003–2007); currently serves as President of the International Numismatic Council (since 2022), was Chair of ICOMON (2019–2022), and is on the board of the Saint-Gaudens Memorial and the Glyptothek in Munich.

Image Caption: Deified head of Alexander the Great (bound with royal fillet, wearing ram horn of Ammon). Silver tetradrachm; Pergamon, Aeolis (mod. Turkey); reign of Lysimachus, ca. 287–282 ʙᴄᴇ. American Numismatic Society, 1966.75.102 (used with permission).

Artist Lecture - Radical Softness: The Responsive Art of Janet Echelman
2026-04-24 18:00 - 19:00 | Tampa Museum of Art, 120 W Gasparilla Plaza, Tampa, FL, 33602, United States
Radical Softness: The Responsive Art of Janet Echelman
Join us for an artist lecture with Janet Echelman, an artist featured in the exhibition Avant Garde: Remarkable Women in the Permanent Collection. Echelman creates experiential sculpture at the scale of buildings that transform with wind and light. The art shifts from being an object you look at, to something you can get lost in. Her work defies categorization as it intersects disciplinary boundaries, from Sculpture, Architecture, and Urban Design to Material Science, Computer Science, Engineering, and Performance. Using unlikely materials from knotted fiber and atomized water particles to choreographed dancers, Echelman combines ancient craft with original computational design software to create artworks that have become focal points for urban life on five continents.
Lectures are offered free with the cost of daily admission:

Art+ Museum Members: Free
Not-Yet-Members: $25
College Students: Free

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Janet Echelman sculpts at the scale of buildings and city blocks, creating large-scale, fluid installations that merge art, architecture, and engineering to anchor public spaces across five continents five continents. Her work transforms with wind and light, inviting viewers into immersive experiences rather than static observation. Echelman uses unlikely materials—from atomized water particles to fiber stronger than steel—blending traditional craft with advanced computational design. Echelman’s unconventional path includes five years living in a Balinese village, graduate studies in both painting and psychology, and teaching at MIT, Harvard, and Princeton. Oprah ranked Echelman’s work #1 on her List of 50 Things That Make You Say Wow!, and she received the Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award in Visual Arts, honoring “the greatest innovators in America today.” For more information visit www.echelman.com

Image Caption: Photograph by Amy Martz

Antiquities Lecture: When Women Ruled The World
2026-05-03 14:00 - 15:00 | Tampa Museum of Art, 120 W Gasparilla Plaza, Tampa, FL, 33602, United States
When Women Ruled The World
A woman’s power in the ancient world (and much of human history) was always compromised from the outset, but who were the women who once ruled the richest and most successful state of the ancient Mediterranean during the Bronze Age? Ancient Egyptian female kings, including Hatshepsut and Nefertiti, really did rule against all odds. Given this social reality in the ancient world, how then did women negotiate roles or power and authority? Addressing some of the causes of social inequality in this lecture, Prof. Kara Cooney will go beyond myth and legend to shed light on these female pharaohs and reveal their historical legacy.
Sponsored by Charles & Elizabeth Lyman
Lectures are offered free with the cost of daily admission:

Art+ Museum Members: Free
Not-Yet-Members: $25
College Students: Free

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Kara Cooney is a professor of ancient Egyptian art and architecture and chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles. Specializing in social history, gender studies, and economies of the ancient world, she received her PhD in Egyptology from Johns Hopkins University. Her books include The Woman Who Would Be King: Hatshepsut’s Rise to Power in Ancient Egypt, When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt, and The Good Kings: Absolute Power in Ancient Egypt and the Modern World. Her latest books include Recycling for Death: Coffin Reuse in Ancient Egypt and the Theban Royal Caches, Ancient Egyptian Society: Challenging Assumptions, Exploring Approaches, and Coffin Commerce.

Image Caption: Bust of Nefertiti (Plaster sculpture, replica; Egypt; Modern, 1933). On loan from the Royal Ontario Museum, Gift of the Egypt Exploration Society, 933.64.10
