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New exhibits coming to museum
By BRYAN GILMER, Times Staff Writer ST. PETERSBURG -- The Florida International Museum is scaling down its struggling John F. Kennedy exhibition and sending some of the artifacts on tour. New rotating exhibits will be brought in to freshen the museum's offerings, including a selection of model airplanes from the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and an exhibit reviewing the 75 people Time magazine has named "Person of the Year," museum leaders said Wednesday. Although the museum lost more than a half-million dollars last year, its president, W. Richard Johnston, says finances are improving. He insists that these adjustments and a plan to lease space to St. Petersburg College will put the museum on a solid footing. "I feel very comfortable that this place has turned around," Johnston said. He likes the scheduled mix of exhibits and looks forward to a traveling Baseball Hall of Fame collection scheduled to arrive late next year. The nonprofit museum ran into difficulty when it decided that the Kennedy artifacts should become a permanent exhibit. The museum used to open only part of each year to display large, traveling exhibits. "It was set up (with the expectation that) it was going to be a blockbuster," museum vice president Kathy Oathout said Wednesday. That means the galleries can accommodate the hundreds of thousands of visitors drawn by previous so-called "blockbuster" exhibits such as the Titanic. Those exhibits are expensive to stage. Because the museum is now budgeting to break even on just 50,000 visitors per year, it will squeeze the Kennedy collection into less floor space and make room for drawing cards that can be obtained at a reasonable price, Oathout said. An outside company is putting together the mobile Kennedy show, which will stop first at Opryland in Nashville, Tenn., then possibly in Atlantic City. It will include the former president's christening ring and one of his rocking chairs, his passport, his wallet, more than a hundred other artifacts, and many photos and papers the museum has held in its vault but has not displayed. The museum will lend about 125 of 650 items now on display. Oathout said the museum hopes to break even on the first year of the tour, but she thinks it can generate $150,000 to $200,000 in subsequent years. She said museums in Japan and Ireland have expressed interest in hosting it. The museum, which occupies a former department store, uses just one of the building's four levels. The second floor is being renovated to hold additional exhibits, including those available through the museum's affiliation with the Smithsonian Institution. It is asking the Smithsonian for displays on the American presidency and the politics of American first ladies, and it has successfully booked others. Coming attractions include a collection called "The Graceful Envelope," scheduled for September. The exhibit is the result of a calligraphy contest conducted by the National Postal Museum. Entrants elaborately addressed envelopes and sent them through the mail to the museum, where they were judged. "Many incorporate carefully selected stamps into the design of the address," a Smithsonian summary of the exhibit notes. Other exhibits may have broader appeal. "On Miniature Wings: Model Aircraft from the National Air and Space Museum" arrives April 27. The exhibit includes intricate scale models of military, commercial and recreational aircraft, including World War II fighters such as the Japanese Zero and the American P-51 Mustang. Most of the models are one-sixteenth the actual size of the plane depicted. Some are more than 50 years old, and some were used in designing and marketing the aircraft. Oathout also is excited about the Time magazine "Person of the Year" exhibit, which in September will make St. Petersburg the third stop on its nine-city tour. It will show first in New York and Washington. "They want to have a large reception (here), bringing some of the people of the year in," she said. "There is no cost involved in this, and they are going to do advertising for the exhibit in Time magazine." That exhibit will return a little Kennedy to the museum: He was Man of the Year in 1961.
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