Tampa Museum of Art

The Tampa Museum of Art is located in downtown Tampa, Florida. The museum exhibits 20th-century fine art, as well as Greek, Roman, and Etruscan antiquities. It opened in 1979 on the banks of Hillsborough River.

Relocation struggles

Since its inception, museum planners knew that the Tampa Museum of Art's original building was too small for its collection. [ [http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/jan/18/na-going-dark-with-one-last-exhibit/ Going 'Dark' With One Last Exhibit ] ] Proposals for expansion or relocation were the subject of discussion and controversy for years. Several different plans were proposed either by the city of Tampa or the museum board, including:

* in 2001, architect Rafael Vinoly designed a dramatic $76 million building which would have included a huge metal canopy overhanging nearby city streets. The project proved too costly and perhaps unsafe in a hurricane. [ [http://www.tbo.com/multimedia/popup/MGB3AOOTHCE.html Multimedia reports - from TBO.com ] ]
* From 2003 to 2005, Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio proposed that the museum be relocated to one of several abandoned or underutilized buildings downtown, including an old federal courthouse and a small office tower. However, the museum board was unenthusiastic about the choices. As it turned out, converting the courthouse into usable museum space proved too expensive and disagreement over the appraised price of the office tower scrapped those plans as well.

A new home

In 2006, the museum board and the city of Tampa agreed to use public and private funds to construct a $33 million, 66,000 square foot new museum in redesigned Curtis Hixon Park as part of Mayor Iorio's Riverwalk project along the Hillsborough River. The building (by architect Stanley Saitowitz) will look like "a metal box sitting on a glass pedestal" and will make use of aluminum, glass, and fiber optic color-changing lights in the exterior walls to make the building itself a work of art. [ [http://www.sptimes.com/2007/05/11/Hillsborough/Tampa_reinterprets_it.shtml Hillsborough: Tampa reinterprets its art museum plan ] ] New homes for the Tampa History Center and Tampa Children's Museum will also be built nearby.

The current museum building must be torn down to make way for the new one. In the meantime, the Tampa Museum of Art will temporarily move to the historic Centro Espanol building in West Tampa, which has been vacant for several years. [ [http://www2.tbo.com/content/2007/nov/01/me-art-museum-may-pay-visit-to-west-tampa/ Art Museum May Pay Visit To West Tampa ] ] Groundbreaking for the project took place on April 18, 2008 [ [http://www.wmnf.org/news_stories/5487 Tampa Museum of Art Breaks Ground] ] , and construction is scheduled to be completed by the fall of 2009. [ [http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/jan/18/na-going-dark-with-one-last-exhibit/ Going 'Dark' With One Last Exhibit ] ]

Artist exhibitions

*Mario Bencomo, Cuban painter.

External links

* [http://www.tampagov.net/dept_tampa_museum_of_art/ Tampa Museum of Art]
* [http://www.newtma.org/ Official site of new museum, including images of building design]
* [http://www.tampagov.net/dept_tampa_museum_of_art/information_resources/new_museum_information.asp City of Tampa announcement about new museum plan]

References