Today Is Not Over Yet

Tampa’s New Museum of Art

If you’re going to be anywhere near Florida early next month and staying overnight in the luxurious hotels in Tampa, you may have the chance to see the public grand opening of the new Tampa Museum of Art, which will have a ribbon-cutting ceremony and celebration on February 6th, 2010.  Part of the celebration will include activities such as creating jewelry, making your own collage and designing your own museum.  In this new building, the Tampa Museum will have a variety of exhibits and galleries, including Greek and Roman antiquities, paintings, photography, and recent acquisitions.

Among the recent acquisitions, patrons of the museum may find six works of interest: Leslie Lerner’s My Life in France: The Oceanside: The Green Day, from 2002.  Lerner was an American artist who lived from 1949 to 2005.  The work is acrylic on ragboard.  There’s Bruce Marsh’s Escalante Study, Road to Boulder #2, an oil on panel.  He’s an American artist, born in 1937.  Also in the acquisitions is Alamar, 2007, a color lithograph, a representation of a sandal.  There’s a mixed media assemblage known by Rocky Bridges, titled Transitional Desire, also from 2007.  Then Horst & Daniel Zielske provides a photograph known as Nanjing Donglu III, Shanghai, from the series Megalopolis Shanghai, 2006.   Finally, and perhaps most intriguingly, there is Burk Uzzle’s Kitchen with Wedding Cake and Alligator, from the John Herrmann Series, 2006.

In the permanent collection, you’ll find a number of interesting works, including such paintings as Sylvia Plimack Mangold’s Trees at the Pond from 1985, William Pachner’s Landscape from 1976, Willie Cole’s Sunflower from 1994, Jon Corbino’s Preliminary Study for the Centurion, from 1950, and Neil Welliver’s Cedar Pole from 1979.

Whether you arrive in February or March, there’s something to do at the Tampa Art Museum.  In upcoming events, on March 6th and 7th, the museum will host the Raymond James Gasparilla Arts Festival.  Included in the 40th year of the festival will be the annual Children’s Activity Tent with activities which are eco-friendly.