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What's Brewing

Museum needs our support

By SUSAN THURSTON
Published September 30, 2005

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

Less than six months ago, the Tampa Museum of Art expected to be closed during construction of a new building. No one planned for a fall exhibition schedule.

Then construction plans collapsed, and museum officials had to scramble to find something to cover the walls.

Former museum director Emily Kass, in what might go down as her best feat ever, got on the horn to some of her museum friends and snagged a Georgia O'Keeffe exhibit from Boston's Museum of Fine Arts.

Call it a coup, the product of karma or sheer luck, the show is just what the museum needs. After months of being shoved to the side and told you're no good, the museum deserves to stand tall again, if only temporarily.

Let's hope the arts community responds.

Art lovers of all kinds should flood the gates, not because they've seen O'Keeffe's work on a poster but because they want to support the museum and its future. Here's our chance to say the Tampa Museum of Art matters to our city, regardless of its address.

Museum leaders expect more than 15,000 people to visit the exhibit, which opens Saturday. That doesn't compare to the estimated 100,000 who flocked to the Monet show at the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, but it's still notable. On average, Tampa's museum draws 85,000 visitors a year.

Museum director Ken Rollins, who started full time Monday, hopes the exhibit helps "put a new face on the museum" and gives people a greater appreciation for its work overall. You can bet Rollins will be at the door at tonight's preview party, greeting members - and taking donations.

A lot rides on the exhibit, and he knows it. Before the show closes Jan. 8, city and museum leaders may have picked a new museum site. A successful show will give the museum momentum it desperately needs.

The show, "Georgia O'Keeffe and Her Time," features 44 works from prominent painters in the American modernist movement, from about 1900 to 1930. Previously on loan to an art museum in Nagoya, Japan, the exhibit makes its U.S. debut here in Tampa.

The exhibit has 10 O'Keeffe paintings, including print shop favorites Calla Lily on Grey and Deer's Skull with Pedernal, as well as lesser-known works by Charles Sheeler, Arthur G. Dove, Stuart Davis and Marsden Hartley. The paintings depict aspects of American life, from bold representations of nature to abstract factories and other industrial elements of the time.

Preparing for the show has been a big task for the staff, which is dwindling by the minute. Aaron Paul's last day as curator of Greek and Roman art is today. Rebecca Sexton Larson, the museum's educator for community programs, leaves Oct. 14.

The paintings arrived via truck two weeks ago in huge wooden crates. A white-gloved conservator from Boston accompanied to help unpack and inspect.

Tampa's remaining curator, Elaine Gustafson, arranged the pieces by theme, rather than artists. She chose an O'Keeffe soft green and a pale lavender for accent walls.

Crews finished most of the hanging by Monday. The smell of paint filled the rooms. Floor buffers buzzed about.

Company was coming. Hopefully, a lot of company.

The exhibit cost the museum $240,000, Rollins said. He hopes to recoup the cost in ticket sales, sponsorships and new members, but you never know. At the very least, the show aims to draw people to the museum who otherwise might not come.

Seated in his new office overlooking the Hillsborough River, Rollins pondered the full plate in front of him: building the endowment fund, continuing ongoing programs, expanding the capital campaign and finding a new site, in no particular order.

"I don't believe there's a single problem out there that we can't solve," said Rollins, 63.

Expect him to hit the ground running. He signed on as director for two years, no more and possibly less. The mountains of Mexico are calling. Upon retiring, he plans to buy a place there and focus on his own creative passion - ceramics and sculpture.

For now, he's got Georgia on his mind.

THE LAST DROP: Rollins, who lives in Clearwater, has bought a condo in the former Camden Apartments in Ybor City, where he plans to live while working in Tampa. But don't think for a minute that he's lobbying to put the new museum in Ybor. No place has the edge, he says.

- Susan Thurston can be reached at 226-3394 or thurston@sptimes.com

[Last modified September 29, 2005, 09:20:08]