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Museum wants private money
By CHRISTOPHER GOFFARD © St. Petersburg Times, published April 28, 2001 TAMPA -- For museum workers, it has become a weary ritual: When the Hillsborough River swells, they reach for the sandbags. Just last year, floodwater rose to the top step of the museum's back delivery dock. "We're one of the few museums that has a permanent sandbag collection," museum spokeswoman Lani Czyzewski said. But its dangerous proximity to the river, as anyone associated with the Tampa Museum of Art will tell you, is just the beginning of the museum's woes. Inside, space is so tight that the bulk of the museum's 4,800-odd pieces must be stored underground. Big paintings have to be uncrated before they fit through the loading door. Recently, the Greek heroes from the central-gallery pediment were banished to the floor of the library to save them from the leaking roof. All of that is supposed to change should the museum get a new, three-story, 133,000-square-foot home in the heart of a proposed cultural arts district. Yet although $27-million from the city, approved Thursday by the City Council, supplies a significant head start, museum leaders expect they will need at least that much in private money to build the new facility. "I'm thinking our goal is probably $25- to $30-million or more," said Jeff Tucker, chairman of the museum board. "I'd say that's a minimum." He said the museum is interviewing fundraising consultants for help bringing individual donors, corporations and foundations on board. Tampa hopes to join cities such as Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Denver and San Francisco in building an architecturally distinctive museum. "Museums are really beginning to be a signature catalyst for downtowns, and this can be what it is for Tampa," Tucker said. "We will do a national search for architects and designers." With so much money still to be raised, a timetable for construction has not been set. Officials hope a new building will attract art collectors willing to donate or give first-rate pieces. At about three times the size of the current building, the extra space will also permit the museum to house traveling shows it lacks room for now. "It's sort of like, "If you build it, they will come,"' Tucker said. "It works for art museums, not just baseball fields." Several years ago, a city-commissioned study put the price tag for a 133,000-square-foot museum at $45-million. Renee Williams, the city's arts and cultural affairs director, said consultants are working on calculating operating costs. "If the number's way out there, we'll have to phase in construction so we don't build more than we can afford to operate," she said. Williams said the cultural arts district also will include a museum of African-American art and culture. She said she is studying similar museums across the country for ideas, and Tampa's black community will play a role in shaping it. Robert Brais, vice president of ConsultEcon Inc., the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company performing the operating-cost study for the new museum, said it was too soon to tell how much the current museum's yearly attendance, which ranges between 80,000 and 85,000, might improve with new facilities. "We're looking at comparable museums throughout the United States," he said, noting that the Tampa museum would feature "a moderately scaled permanent collection plus lots of traveling exhibits." Brais declined to say which museums were comparable. "You're not looking to the Getty and the Art Institute of Chicago," he said. - Christopher Goffard can be reached at (813) 226-3337.
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