Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg

Partner Story

About the Exhibition

The Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg (MFA St. Petersburg) received a loan grouping from the Joselyn Art Museum and created the exhibition Dialogues: Unexpected Visual Conversations, which was paired with their own permanent collection to activate dialogues about inequity, climate change, underrepresentation, cultural commonalities, and marginalization.

The loan featured Modern and Contemporary artworks, which were among the weakest areas of the MFA St. Petersburg’s collection, while also representing works by women, artists of color, and members of the LGBTQ community. The loan included major paintings by Kehinde Wiley, Al Held, Donald Judd, Ken Trubkovich, Chuck Forsman, Mickalene Thomas, Martin Puryear, and Robin Bruch. These paintings offered visitors something exciting and thought-provoking and bring art into the building that reflects the diverse, multicultural, and rapidly expanding Tampa Bay area population.

In addition, the loan also included works by Charles Bird King, William de la Montage Cary, Henry Inman, George Caleb Bingham allowed visitors to explore paintings dealing with the expansions of the United States to the west of the Mississippi River. It has also offered the institution a chance to delve into the history of the Native Americans, and how their history, often overlooked, is nonetheless a crucial part of our culture. These works inspired rich, meaningful conversations about a range of topics such as what it is to be American, how the environment is changing, what it is to belong, how we define “self,” how we communicate without words, and how we define beauty.

Programming

This loan grouping really allowed MFA St Petersburg to expand with new programming topics to explore within their community. One of the museum’s programing focuses narrowed in on the local young adult community. MFA St. Petersburg paired up with teens from Pinellas County School District on a paid artworks program. This allowed teens their first glimpse into creative-field career exploration, while also affirming their growing talents. This was also the first time this type of program has taken place at MFA St. Petersburg.

As part of their teen programing goals, they began to engage in a community advisory group for the project to ensure culturally responsive programming and staffing choices. The museum does have teen programming expertise on staff, but this allowed them to engage with more community members and have links with them for any future programing. As a tentative start to the group the staff included a local queer bookstore, local language arts teachers, and Metro Health staff.

MFA St. Petersburg also featured a program called, The Mirror. Students in grades 9-12 were invited to a six-week art and poetry intensive workshop. Led by museum staff, local artists, therapists, and poets, students had the opportunity to explore their own poetic voice through writing as they study the Joselyn Museum loans. Students learned the history, culture, and significance of artworks before diving deeper into the emotional and expressive act of artmaking. Students will then select an artwork to inspire their own creative expression, leading to original poems performed in front of an audience of their peers and informing a project website for future visitors.

MFA St. Petersburg also engaged in performance programing. In partnership with The Florida Orchestra and St. Pete Opera, a two-day production of the opera Good Country was imagined for the museum. Based on a libretto by Ceceilia Raker, Good Country is a 45-minute chamber opera featuring a cast of queer and BIPOC actors, musicians, and vocalists in telling the personal history of historical figure One-Eye Charley, a stagecoach driver in the California Gold Rush who was assigned female at birth and lived life as a man. This was also the first opera featuring a queer cast to be staged at MFA St. Petersburg.

Impact

This loan allowed MFA St. Petersburg to connect with community members while filling the gaps in their collection. With their Learning and Engagement project, MFA St. Petersburg focus engaged their community and also formed a community advisory group. Teens from a local school district were invited to take part in paid arts work that supports creative-field career exploration. The main goal of the community advisory group was to ensure culturally responsive programing and staffing choices.

Why We Love This Project

We also loved the museum’s programing that paired performing arts with the visual arts in their gallery. The two-day production allowed them to bridge the themes in the gallery to come to life during a performance of related topics and settings. This program also allowed them to work with community partners to produce the performance.