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Columns

The good, the bad, and the just dumb

By SANDRA THOMPSON
Published October 21, 2006

Some thoughts on the museum, the mayor and the waterfront park:

On Oct. 13, the Tampa Museum of Art, the one about to become rubble to make way for the mayor's "Central Park," had an opening party. One of the new shows is recent work by Theo Wujcik. I saw much of it in the spring when he opened up the Ybor City studio where he had lived and worked for 13 years. The building was being sold; he had to move.

In the museum show there is even more work he has finished since then. It was good to see Wujcik, here, in Tampa, next to a gallery of Josef Albers. It was also good to hear he has found another studio space in Ybor, although that building is up for sale.

It wasn't so good that the gallery representing Wujcik is in Orlando. I mentioned that to a man at the show, and he said, "People in Tampa don't buy art."

Other than that, it was all good: the party, the music, the art. So our plan to breeze through a stuffy party and slim exhibits and go on to the Florida Orchestra concert in Curtis Hixon Park didn't work out. At the concert's end we saw the spectacular fireworks burst over the windows of the museum's back gallery.

It was so celebratory and, well, so urban.

Compare to an event earlier that week:

The public presentation of plans for the downtown waterfront park was a sort of, "What if the mayor gave a party and nobody came?"

You were all invited. Where were you?

Maybe 30 people turned up, and they all seemed to work for the city or the media. Thomas Balsley, the New York landscape architect whose firm designed the park, begged the sparse audience, clustered near the back, to move up closer. They had spent a lot of time on this, he said, and he wanted people to be able to see.

No one, however, had spent the time to get him a laser pointer.

"I'm lost without a laser pointer," he said more than once, prompting Albert Alfonso, the Tampa architect for the project, to offer him a black pole he had acquired by taking apart an easel.

You can see the renderings for the park at the city's Web site, tampagov.net.

In brief, most of the parkland is a green plaza - a big open space lower than the land around it, creating "a natural amphitheater." A terraced lawn around it will serve as a place to sit and watch, in Balsley's words, "a single kite flier or a performance."

This is to be the place, he said, where all of Tampa will come to celebrate.

The last thing I wanted to see was a big open space. That's what we've got now, and nobody goes there. It's too hot. I wanted to see trees and more trees. Man-made shade, too. And why place it below ground where any hint of a breeze will be cut off?

The nearby Kiley Park space will be a contemplative alternative to all that mad activity in the waterfront park.

Dream on.

But what really lost me is this: The waterfront restaurant yes, with valet parking will partially open onto Kiley Park, lending an outdoor patio to the restaurant's second floor, which will be reserved for private dining rooms.

Are we celebrating yet?

Tampa writer Sandra Thompson can be reached at sthompson125@tampabay.rr.com City Life appears on Saturday.

[Last modified October 21, 2006, 08:14:52]