MUSEUM & CULTURE
Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg
Pinellas County · Gulf Coast
St. Petersburg's first art museum, open since 1965 on four waterfront acres, covering more than 5,000 years in one collection.
ABOUT THIS PLACE
Margaret Acheson Stuart founded the museum and Florida chartered it in 1961. It opened to the public in 1965, the first art museum in the city. John Volk designed the building with a curving colonnade facing Beach Drive, and said he wanted it to convey permanence. It sits on a four-acre waterfront site at 255 Beach Drive Northeast, beside the downtown waterfront parks. The collection spans more than 5,000 years of human work, from antiquity through European and American painting to contemporary art, with Claude Monet, Georgia O'Keeffe and Kehinde Wiley among the names. Photography is a particular strength. A 33,000-square-foot addition called the Hazel Hough Wing opened on the north side in 2008, adding a cafe and a library. The downtown Looper trolley stops outside, which makes it easy to combine with the Dali Museum, the Chihuly Collection and the pier in one day on foot without moving a car. Special exhibitions run alongside the permanent collection through the year
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