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Art Museum Has Been Portrait Of Difficulty

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By ELLEN GEDALIUS, The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 16, 2007

TAMPA - People complained from the start.

The new art museum was awfully small. The exhibit space was minimal. Workshop space was limited. The museum, located behind the Curtis Hixon Convention Center, was barely visible from the street.

Many of the problems cited almost 30 years ago persist today at the Tampa Museum of Art. The convention center was torn down and relocated to Garrison Channel, but art museum officials still list similar complaints about the existing building: too small, too hidden, too poorly planned.

At 5 p.m. today, the doors of the 1979 building will close to the public for good. By the end of January, everything will be moved out. Demolition work could begin as soon as Feb. 1.

Museum leaders' hopes to improve upon the past are pinned on plans for a larger and more architecturally distinct building that will go up only a block or two away.

Attendance has grown over the years - almost 64,000 people visited the museum in fiscal year 2006, a 14 percent increase over the year before - but museum leaders say those numbers would be substantially higher with a modern building that allowed them to attract major exhibits.

The road to that new building, though, has been complicated, controversial, stressful and political.

For Cornelia Corbett, the woman who chaired the board from 2004 until just a few months ago, the work was worth it. Corbett ran the board during the times relations were most strained between art leaders and city officials.

"My whole attitude was just keep putting one foot in front of another," Corbett said. "I kept my thoughts and my feet going."

During the mid-1970s, the city came up with the idea to merge the Tampa Junior Museum and the Tampa Bay Art Center. Both were successful institutions, but neither was on solid fiscal ground. Meanwhile, the city had money to spend on a cultural center.

'Blood, Sweat And Tears'

Barbara Romano, who was instrumental in the merger, recalls the "blood, sweat and tears" it took to meld the two institutions.

The Tampa Museum of Art opened in 1979, with first lady Rosalynn Carter at the dedication ceremony.

Despite all the excitement, just about everyone understood the problem: The building was only 36,000 square feet.

"We knew going in the building was too small. But we didn't have the money to build anything larger," said Romano, who sits on the museum board. "We didn't have expansion plans, either. We added on six or seven times, but it didn't make for a very attractive situation."

Ray Iftert, museum board chairman, put it this way: "We didn't have a 7,500-piece collection when we came to this location."

About 7,000 square feet were added to the building through expansion projects, but the work was done as inexpensively as possible, said Hal Flowers, chairman of the museum's building committee. Everyone knew a new building was inevitable.

Today, the museum has a balanced budget and receives slightly less than a million dollars a year from the city. Still, the 28-year-old building has major problems.

For starters, the roof leaks. Maintenance workers at times have been forced to use garbage cans to collect the rainwater.

The parking garage leaks, too. The air-conditioning system needs work. The storage space is below the flood plain.

The space itself is another problem.

Major art exhibition shows generally require 8,000 to 10,000 square feet of contiguous gallery space. The Tampa Museum of Art has 12,000 square feet of exhibit space, but much of it is inappropriate for major shows.

For example, the lobby isn't suitable for art shows, said Elaine Gustafson, director of exhibitions and collections.

Neither is the terrace gallery, where food and cocktails often are served. Food and drink can hurt the art so little other than glass works have been displayed in that area. Plus, sunlight pours through the windows, meaning light-sensitive art cannot be displayed there - no paintings, no photography.

Plans for the new building call for 15,000 square feet of gallery space. That's not much more than the existing building, but it will be better configured to capture major art shows.

"I will no longer need to have a reception party in a gallery," Gustafson said.

Ken Rollins, the museum's interim executive director, said the new building is being designed as one concept, with multiple phases.

The first phase - to be built in two installments - will be more than 60,000 square feet. Future expansion plans call for a 120,000-square-foot museum. One architect is designing the whole plan.

With the existing building, "there never was a master plan," Rollins said. "The building is quite inefficient."

John Wetenhall, executive director of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, has been to Tampa's museum several times. He, too, can cite the building's shortcomings.

"The greatest challenge is it's so awkwardly located, with a vast plaza in front and awkward parking," Wetenhall said. "It's hard to display great works of art when your building is modest architecture."

A new building should help tremendously, Wetenhall said. The Ringling museum recently completed a $76 million renovation and expansion project. As a result, more museums are interested in lending their works to the Sarasota institution. The number of shows is increasing. Attendance is up 20 percent.

Tampa officials hope for similar success. But the effort to get a new museum hasn't been easy.

A Long Time Coming

Talks for a new building started at least a decade ago. In 1998, plans for a cultural arts district called for a new art museum. In 2001, a master plan developed by Chicago-based Skidmore, Owings & Merrill called for a new art museum close to its existing location on Ashley Drive.

New York architect Rafael Vinoly was hired to design the building. He came up with a design that included a canopy extending over Ashley Drive.

Once again, though, finances played a part in the museum's vision. Despite a major fundraising effort by art museum leaders, the $76 million plan crumbled in March 2005 when museum officials could not get financing.

That set off a series of debates over where to put a new building. Mayor Pam Iorio unveiled plans in April 2005 to move the museum to the old federal courthouse building on Florida Avenue. Art museum leaders badly wanted to stay close to the Hillsborough River and didn't support the idea.

In February 2006, Iorio announced the museum would move to the corner of Ashley Drive and Kennedy Boulevard. A few months later, the plan died when the city found appraisals were several million dollars below what the city was going to pay to buy the space.

The latest plan has stuck: In August 2006, Iorio said the art museum would sit adjacent to the Poe Garage on Ashley, next to the proposed Children's Museum and part of a proposed redesign of Curtis Hixon Park.
Art museum leaders embraced the idea. The museum hired San Francisco architect Stanley Saitowitz to design the new building.

"I really do hope this building will draw people to Tampa and will be known at least throughout the Southeast as one of the better institutions of art, not necessarily for our collection but for our education outreach and our exhibitions," Romano said.

Corbett said a better building will add to the quality of life in the city.

"I always hoped Tampa would have a bigger and more substantial museum. When I travel, I always go to see what's at a museum first," Corbett said. "It's going to happen. It really feels good."

Information from Tribune archives was used in this report. Reporter Ellen Gedalius can be reached at (813) 259-7679 or egedalius@tampatrib.com.

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