New Tampa home gives Florida Museum of Photographic Arts new opportunities

New Tampa home gives Florida Museum of Photographic Arts new opportunities In 2001 a museum dedicated to fine art photography opened in a small storefront space on the second floor of Old Hyde Park Village, provided rent-free by the complex's owner. Its square footage is about 8,000 (compared to about 60,000 at the Museum of Fine Arts, for example). It has a budget of about $300,000 (MFA's is about $3. 3 million), and its annual attendance is 7,500 (at MFA it's about 100,000). Levin and Robson both speak of "baby steps," of wanting not to overextend the museum and to continue to grow slowly. Its operating costs won't increase much after then move, for example. Renovation costs are minor (the building's owner is absorbing some), as well as the approximately $100,000 is being funded by the Ferman family. Membership increased from a handful to its current 800 members. A paid museum manager allowed weekday hours. The move increased the square footage from about 600 to 3,000, along with the shows, changed every three or four months, became more ambitious, combining traditional (Ansel Adams) with avant-garde (contemporary Chinese photographers). The move to the Cube doubles the museum's exhibition space, to 400 linear feet. For the first time, it will be ready to simultaneously mount special exhibitions and display a portion of its 250-piece collection. Most important, the move gives the museum greater visibility. It sits on Ashley Drive at the northern end of Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park. Across the greensward are the Tampa Museum of Art as well as the Glazer Children's Museum, so its presence adds to the museum synergy. Architecturally, the building is beautiful. It has six floors that are essentially perimeter corridors built around a large central atrium. He read about the museum shortly after it was founded and visited. "I kept coming back and then started going to meetings," he said. (Unlike most organizations, the museum's board meetings have always been open to anyone. ) "I wanted to know if it could succeed. We could win without someone else losing. " Robson became a board member and is now the board president. But we found this space first, so we took it. We'll begin a search for a director — probably a regional search — in the near future. " Till then, it's all volunteer hands on deck, and they seem enthusiastic. Milani arranged for and will curate the Warhol show, which has celebrity silk-screen prints (based on photographs) along with photographs. Future shows being planned including ones featuring Chuck Close and Dorothea Lange and group shows organized with a theme: "Something on the recession," says Robson, is in the works. The museum has a long-term lease (no specifics given), and they hope to take over all of the floors in the Cube eventually. Petersburg, had one of the largest holdings in the Southeast. "Chuck (Levin) was the tipping point in my mind," Robson says. "When you're in business, the other guy always wants your business. They're the competitor. Chuck believed that there was no competition: the more museums the better. The museum is the newest and, even with more space, the smallest in the Tampa Bay area. The windows that let it in take up valuable display space. That's probably the biggest issue leaders had in researching the move, and the need to control humidity (no friend of art, either) in a vast open space. The Florida Museum of Photographic Arts intends to live up to its grand name. If the past portends the future, it will. "We had people approach us from other areas like Channelside," Robson says. So in 2006, the current, grander name was conferred. After moving to three different spaces in Old Hyde Park Village (each vacated when a paying tenant came along), they moved downtown in 2006 into a rentedstorefront in the Bank of America Plaza. Glass walls on two sides fill it with light. The museum itself has no grand entrance, no sense of arrival other than a sign outside, though there is discussion about hanging banners on the glass facade like those on the north side, which opens onto a bank lobby. Visitors walk across the lobby, a seating and meeting area with a Kahwa Coffee bar and perky red furniture, to get to elevators that take them to the museum, which is on the second and third floors. Levin and Robson said there were discussions with the landlord about adding a distinctive staircase, but the cost was prohibitive along with the owner balked at losing so much lobby space. Gallery configuration isn't ideal either. They're more like hallways. The space for walking along them to see the art will become even narrower, because alcoves are increasingly being built to improve the linear feet on which to hang the art. "We never found anything that had everything we wanted. But light is the last thing you would like in a museum. It fades and destroys art. They called in an engineer to address those environmental concerns. " His concern, shared by others, was that a photography museum wasn't needed. New Tampa home gives Florida Museum of Photographic Arts new opportunities Trade News selected by Local Linkup on 04/03/2012