A wall-to-wall riches of art shows
This year's schedule of bay area museum exhibitions reflects a flourishing arts scene.
By Lennie Bennett, Times art critic
Published September 13, 2007
The theme of our annual museum exhibitions calendar is about going up and coming down, and we're not talking only about the art on gallery walls.
At two museums, big changes are afoot that affect this season's exhibition schedule.
The Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg takes a low profile during the fall, preparing for the opening of its new wing in early 2008. That will be the biggest art (and probably social) event of the season. The Tampa Museum of Art, which hopes to break ground on a new building in 2008, closes up shop on Ashley Drive in mid December for the building's demolition. In late January, the museum will move to smaller, interim space at the Tampa Convention Center for several years.
As for this season, the John and Mable Ringling Museum has had the better part of a year to settle into its expansive new galleries and offers an unusually eclectic series of special exhibitions as counterpoints to its magnificent baroque permanent collection.
There still is no word on groundbreaking for a new Dali Museum, but several other museums seem poised to join the expansion movement.
Even as things change, the exhibitions at all our museums, from the very focused to big and broad, offer a diverse palette.
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Museum of Fine Arts
255 Beach Drive NE, St. Petersburg(727) 896-2667 www.fine-arts.org
- Currently: "The MFA Collection in a new Light," through Sept.30.
- "Sacred India, Sacred Tibet" Oct.6 through Feb.24. Bronzes, wood sculptures and paintings inspired by Hinduism and Buddhism range from the 10th to the 20th centuries. As part of the exhibition, Tibetan lamas will create a sand mandala of the Buddha of Compassion in the museum's Great Hall several times in November.
- "Poetry of the Commonplace: A Selection of Latin American Photographs" Oct.16 through January. Part of Arte 2007, Tampa Bay's Festival of the Americas, this exhibition features images by Manual Alvarez Bravo, Manuel Carrillo, Mariana Yampolsky and Graciela Iturbide and others.
- "Unveiled: Rarely Seen Works from the Collection," March22 through Aug.26. The inaugural show for the Hazel Hough Wing will have a gallery featuring works from museum founder Margaret Acheson Stuart's legacy. The new Works on Paper gallery will display masterworks from the collection.
- "When Gold Blossoms: Indian Jewelry from the Susan L. Beningson Collection." Sept.13, 2008, through Dec.28, 2008.
The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art
5401 Bay Shore Road, Sarasota (941) 359-5700 www.ringling.org
- "Francisco Goya: Los Caprichos" Sept.29 through Jan.6. The series of etchings, first published in 1799 and widely copied, are among the most famous works by the great Spanish artist. This edition is one of the originals.
- "Cuba Avant-Garde: Contemporary Cuban Art from the Farber Collection," Oct.6 through Dec. 30. Organized by the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, it features 58 artworks created during the 1990s and early 2000s by 42 Cuban-born artists, some of whom still live in Cuba.
- "Grandma Moses: Grandmother to the Nation," Jan.26 through April13. Probably the most famous self-taught artist, Anna Mary Robertson Moses (1860-1961) achieved fame and fortune after she picked up a paint brush at 67. On view are 25 paintings.
- "Jacob Lawrence: Three Series of Prints - Hiroshima, Genesis, and Toussaint L'Ouverture," Jan.19 through May4. Jacob Lawrence was too fine an artist to be pigeonholed as simply "African-American." His heritage certainly informed all his work, but his creative vision transcends it.
- "Phantasmagoria: Specters of Absence," May24 through Aug.10. The Ringling gets edgy in the installation-based group exhibition featuring art created with the ephemera of vapors such as mist and fog. The international roster includes William Kentridge, Christian Boltanski, Regina Silveira and Jim Campbell.
Tampa Museum of Art
Note: The museum has not released an exhibition schedule for its interim space at the Tampa Convention Center.
- Currently: "Color: Ten African-American Artists," through Sept.23; "National Sculpture Society 74th Annual Awards Exhibition," through Sept.30; and "The Big Picture: 2006 Photographer Laureate Steven Gregory," through Oct. 7.- "Frida Kahlo: Images of an Icon"Oct.13 through Dec.16. This is an exhibit more about Kahlo the celebrity than Kahlo the artist, with 60 photographic portraits taken by leading 20th century photographers. For Kahlo lovers, it's a great glimpse into her life.
University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum
4202 E Fowler Ave., Tampa (813) 974-2849 www.usfcam.usf.edu
- Currently: "Elsewhere," through Oct.13. The exhibition takes an ancient theme - the quest - and explores it in works by contemporary artists working in photography and video, including Olaf Breuning, Patty Chang, Joachim Koester, Stuart Hawkins, Nancy Holt/Robert Smithson, Sarah Anne Johnson and Emanuel Licha.
- "Homing Devices," Oct.26 through Dec.15. The exhibition, a major part of Arte 2007, showcases Latin American and Caribbean sculptors, including Abel Barroso, Maria Fernanda Cardoso, Tiago Carneiro da Cunha, Enrique Chagoya, Edouard Duval-Carrie, Iran do Espiritu Santo, Jose Manuel Fors, Kcho, Ernesto Leal, Los Carpinteros, Luis o Miguel, Jorge Macchi, Cildo Meireles, Sandra Ramos, Rosangela Renno, Betsabee Romero and Sofia Taboas.
- "Robert Stackhouse: The Complete Editions Archive," Jan.11 through Feb.23. Stackhouse is a prominent international artist who lives in St. Petersburg but rarely exhibits in the area. Several venues in west-central Florida are coordinating shows that will highlight his diverse career. The Contemporary Art Museum will exhibit all print editions that the artist has produced during his career to date, supplemented by drawings and sculpture.
- "32nd annual Juried Art Exhibition," March24 through April12. This year's juror is Anne Pasternak, executive director of Creative Time, a New York organization that presents art in the public realm.
- "MFA Graduate Exhibition," April 25 through May23.
Florida Museum of Photographic Arts
200 N Tampa St., Tampa (813) 221-2222 www.fmopa.org
- "Cuba," through Nov.10. Clyde Butcher's Cuban landscapes are joined by the photography-based work of Maria Martinez-Canas, photographs by David Audet and "Life in Cuba," personal photographs from area families.- "Eye in the Sky: The Works of Robert Hartman," Nov.15 through Jan.5.- "The Magic Box of Abelardo Morell,"Jan.17 through March 15
Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art
600 Klosterman Road, Tarpon Springs, (727) 712-5762, www.spcollege.edu/museum
- Currently: "O, Appalachia: Artists of the Southern Mountains," through Nov.4. This collection features self-taught artists living and working in the region known for its rich cultural traditions.
- "Paths That Connect: Japanese Woodblock Prints" Nov.18 through Jan.13.
- "The Highwaymen," Jan. 27 through March 9. A group of paintings by the mostly self-taught Florida artists who became famous for inventing their own genre.
- "Dorothy Gillespie: Shaping Sculpture," March 30 through May 28
- "California Dreaming: California Fibers at Convergence" and "Abraham Rattner Tapestries," June 8 through Aug. 3
Gulf Coast Museum of Art
12211 Walsingham Road, Largo, (727) 518-6833, www.gulfcoastmuseum.org .
- Currently: "William Oliver: Evolution of Movement" and "Pablo Siebel: Reflexiones Intimas," through Oct.14.
- "John Costin: Wings of Splendor," Oct. 27 through Jan. 26
- "Frida Kahlo: Through the Lens of Nickolas Muray," Oct. 27 through Jan. 26.
- "33rd International Miniature Art Show," Jan. 20 through Feb. 10
- "Liquid Metal: Carol Jenrette, Jim Liccione & Bob Coon," Feb. 23 through May 4
- "Mysterious Clarity: Mark Messersmith, Ray Burgraff, Lillian Garcia-Roig," May17 through July 27
Salvador Dali Museum
1000 Third St. S, St. Petersburg, (727) 823-3767, www.salvadordalimuseum.org.
- Currently: "Dali in Focus" and "The Fine Art of Collecting Dali," through January, and "Dali's Biblia Sacra," through November.
- "Borrowed works from the Dali Museum in Spain, the Teatro Museo Dali in Figueres," Sept. 23 through March. Three works never exhibited in St. Petersburg, including Swallow's Tail, his last work, and his earliest known painting, an undated landscape painted when he was no older than 10.
- "Dali and Film," Feb.8 through December. The iconic Persistence of Memory returns to the Dali Museum, on loan from the Museum of Modern Art, as the centerpiece of an exhibition illustrating the connection between Dali's paintings and drawings and his films. Films include L'Age d'or and Un Chien andalou, made with fellow surrealist Luis Bunuel, and his Disney collaboration, Destino.
- "Mabel Palacin - Ina Noche Sin Fin (The Rules of Time)" June. The museum has commissioned the Catalan videographer to create a new work that reflects her interpretations of Dali, the museum, its setting and the collection.
- "Wifredo Lam in North America," Oct.2, 2008, through Jan.10, 2009. The Cuban artist was one of the most important surrealist artists of the 1930s and 1940s.