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Tampa Museum of Art Tampa Museum of Art
Tampa, FL

Museum Image 474: Copyright Richard Barnes

Tampa Museum of Art
120 W Gasparilla Plaza
Tampa, FL 33602
Main # (813) 274-8130
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tampamuseum.org

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EXHIBITIONS


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Travels in Italy: a 19th-Century Journey through Photography
January 2023-July 2023

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.

Supporting Sponsor
Frank E. Duckwall Foundation - Making Tampa Bay a Better Place

All in Favor: New Works in the Permanent Collection
Through July 23, 2023

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.

Time for Change: Art and Social Unrest in the Jorge M. Pérez Collection
Through March 12, 2023

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.
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.

Exhibition Sponsor: Gobioff Foundation

Jacob Hashimoto: This Particle of Dust
Through 2023

The artist takes inspiration from cloud formations and the cosmos, with each navy blue kite featuring star-like markings. Depending on the time of day and the natural light filtering through the atrium skylights, the kites will shift in color intensity. This Particle of Dust explores the visual poetics of light and dark, color and form, as well as space and architecture.

Created from over 2,500 handmade kites, This Particle of Dust is a site-specific installation and unique to the Tampa Museum of Art’s architecture. The installation represents Jacob Hashimoto’s exploration of abstract landscape and his interest in blurring the boundaries between painting and sculpture. This Particle of Dust evokes the experience of observing the night sky through various cloud clusters. Thousands of transparent and opaque white discs hang suspended from a bespoke armature. Navy blue kites, imprinted with white and cerulean blue star patterns, hang amidst the cloud shapes and catch the light as the sun rises over the Museum and dips into the horizon over the Hillsborough River. Depending on one’s vantage point, either from the lobby, stairwell, or galleries, the experience of This Particle of Dust shifts—from below the cloudscape appears to drift into the sky while at eye-level the viewer looks directly into the stars.  

Hashimoto began making kite sculptures twenty-years ago while an art student in Chicago. Inspired by traditional Chinese kite making in the city of Weifang, where the artform of sculptural dragon kites originated, Hashimoto has made hundreds of thousands of kites from Japanese paper and resin. He appreciates kites as a universal object of joy that is recognized across the globe. Transformed into monumental artworks, Hashimoto’s kites convey happiness, wonder, and serenity.

Purvis Young: Redux
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. 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.

Purvis Young: Redux is one of several exhibitions on view between 2022-2024, highlighting the Tampa Museum of Art’s permanent collection focused on ancient art and modern and contemporary art.

Purvis Young: Redux is presented in part by the Terra Foundation for American Art.

About Purvis Young
Born in 1943 in Miami, Florida, Purvis Young’s mother encouraged her son’s artistic talents. His grandparents immigrated to Miami by boat from the Bahamas and settled in Overtown. Although he did not complete high school, Young educated himself as an adult by watching documentaries and reading. He spent hours at the Miami-Dade Public Library, and books became an important part of his life and work.

As a child, Young enjoyed drawing, however, it wasn’t until adulthood that he embraced painting. He spent hours looking at books filled with imagery by El Greco, Rembrandt, Paul Gaugin, and Vincent van Gogh. In the early 1970s, Young began painting regularly, and he created a visual language reflective of life in Overtown. Although adversity was constant, Young’s neighborhood inspired him, and he strove to paint positive imagery. Angels with halos dominated his work and represented the good he admired in people. He revered pregnant women and holy men and painted this imagery in a range of configurations. While he supported his community, he also acknowledged its struggles.

Young created his magnum opus early in his career. For a short period of time in the 1970s, Young installed his paintings from the ground to the rooftops of abandoned storefronts in his neighborhood. The Wall of Respect in Chicago, a mural that featured heroic black men and women painted at the height of the Civil Rights Movement in the late 1960s, influenced Young. He aimed to replicate the Wall of Respect in Overtown with his powerful, provocative paintings and often overlapped the paintings in an extreme salon-style hang. Titled Goodbread Alley Mural, the project was on view from approximately 1971-74 until the City of Miami started to dismantle the artwork. The installation on view at the Tampa Museum of Art takes inspiration from the Goodbread Alley Mural and features the entirety of the Museum’s Purvis Young collection.

In the late 1990s, Don and Mera Rubell, art collectors based in Miami, befriended the artist and acquired the contents of Young’s studio. In total, they transferred over 3,300 works from his studio to their art warehouse. Since then, they have donated nearly 500 works by Purvis Young to museums and universities across the country. Young died in 2010, and today his work resides in private and public collections across the globe.

Highlights from the Karam Collection
Through Marcvh 26, 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 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. 

Learn more about the Karam Collection at the USF Libraries.

About Farid Karam, M.D. 
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.

Young @ Art 2023
Through February 12, 2023

Each year the Tampa Museum of Art invites Hillsborough County art teachers to submit a student’s artwork for the Young at Art Student Exhibition. The Museum celebrates the creativity of this year’s submissions from students in kindergarten through eighth grade. We would also like to acknowledge the dedication and support of the visual arts by the educators, school staff and administration, and the families and friends of the artists.

130+ student artworks from private and public schools will be on view in the Education Center hallway. This exhibition is free to the public.

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