MUSEUM & CULTURE
Pensacola Museum of Art
Escambia County · Panhandle & Emerald Coast
Modern and contemporary art in the city's old jail, where some galleries were cells.
ABOUT THIS PLACE
The building at 407 South Jefferson Street went up in 1906 as Pensacola's first permanent jail. When the city built a new one in 1954 it leased the old jail to the newly formed Pensacola Art Association for a dollar a year, and the association turned the cells into exhibition rooms. Members of the American Association of University Women had founded the group that same year. It became the Pensacola Museum of Art in 1982, bought the building outright in 1988, and passed to the University of West Florida in July 2016. The permanent collection leans to twentieth-century, modern and contemporary work, with painting, sculpture and works on paper, alongside decorative arts, European and American glass and African tribal art. Picasso, Warhol, Calder and Dali are among the artists represented, which is more than a city this size usually manages. The museum has been accredited by the American Alliance of Museums since 2001. It is one of the four places covered by the single Historic Pensacola ticket, so a visitor can see it and the historic village on the same admission
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