MUSEUM & CULTURE
Tampa Museum of Art
Hillsborough County · Gulf Coast
A downtown art museum on the Riverwalk holding Greek and Roman antiquities alongside modern and contemporary work, in a building that changes color at night.
ABOUT THIS PLACE
The institution dates to 1920, when it was founded as the Tampa Museum of Fine Arts. Its present building opened on February 6, 2010, in Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park, on the east bank of the Hillsborough River with the Riverwalk running past the door. Stanley Saitowitz designed it, roughly 66,000 square feet of aluminum and glass raised on a glass base and wrapped in fiber optic lighting that shifts color after dark, so the exterior reads as a work in its own right. Inside, the walls are kept plain white to leave the art alone. The permanent collection runs to about 8,000 objects on two floors. The core is Greek, Roman and Etruscan antiquity, more than 660 pieces covering roughly 3000 BC to AD 500, which is unusual depth for a museum this size in Florida. The rest is modern and contemporary painting, sculpture, photography and new media, with Alexander Calder and Andy Warhol among the names. Dick Corbett gave 25 million dollars in April 2022 toward a centennial expansion, and a renovation finished in 2023 added seven galleries and an education center
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