By 2024, Tampa art patrons will have a new four-story glass structure on the waterfront that will add exhibit space, education and event space and expand the visitor experience.
The Tampa Museum of Art announced the renovation and expansion plans on Monday, which will double its exhibit space and give patrons an eagle’s view of the city from a public rooftop terrace.
For three years now, the Museum Trustees, Foundation of Directors and various consultants have developed plans for the museum based on its usage, demand and sustained annual growth, according to a press release.
“In 2021, TMA began major renovations to enlarge programming spaces, dramatically expand the Education Center, and complete substantial repurposing of administrative and storage spaces to make room for additional galleries.”
Mario Weiss and Michael Manfredi, of the New York-based Weiss/Manfredi Architecture/Landscape, Urbanism, is designing the expansion.
“I can’t think of a site for a museum anywhere in the world like this,” Weiss said. It’s on the cultural ribbon that is the Riverwalk.”
“We’re very excited about this project,” Manfredi said. “This is an extraordinarily special project. What struck us when we first came out here and met folks at the museum was that Tampa was an extraordinarily optimistic city that sees a bright future for itself. As designers, that is extraordinarily meaningful.”
Manfredi called the museum “the belly button of the city facing a park on the river, all the ingredients to make it a truly public nexus.”
More than 80% of the work will be privately funded through the Museum’s Board of Trustees, the Foundation Board of Directors and other sponsors, patrons and members. An unnamed community stakeholder invested $100 million in the project as a matching gift, in hopes it will encourage others to participate.
A Community Revitalization Area tax fund (CRA) is partially funding the Museum’s site redevelopment of Curtis Hixon Park and will include work on new pedestrian plazas and refurbished pedestrian walkways on Cass Street. The Hillsborough County Commission is also contributing grant funds.
The Tampa Museum of Art celebrated its centennial last year. Its current physical footprint opened in 2010, three years after it became a nonprofit independent of the City of Tampa. This new expansion is the second phase of growth and development.
“I think with this addition, people will look at Tampa differently,” said Jerry Divers, chair of the Campaign Cabinet and president of the Tampa Museum of Art Foundation. “Having lived in the Tampa Bay area all of my life, this city has been very important to me. I believe that the cultural life of the city is key to our long-term success, and I believe that a fine art museum is key to that cultural life.”
“The expansion of the museum is going to incorporate so many different amenities that will draw the community in and create a feeling of ownership,” said Tampa Mayor Jane Castor. “Looking at the future of the Tampa Museum of Art really goes hand-in-hand with the growth of our city as being very dynamic, very robust, and having something for everyone here in the city of Tampa.”
Michal Tomar, executive director of the museum, called the expansion “a transformative project for our downtown Tampa site.”
“It has to be an extroverted building,” Manfredi said. “An outward-facing building. It’s taking the museum box and turning it inside out. It will amplify the connections along the Riverwalk and facing for the first time at the ground level in a very convincing way, the park.”
There will be new dog parks and run areas and the public terrace, which Manfredi said will be “a new center of art and culture for the community.”
“We recognize that this expansion extends far beyond physical infrastructure, and our goal is to integrate the museum with the vibrant Riverwalk and downtown that surrounds it,” said Dianne Jacob, chair of the Tampa Museum of Art Board of Trustees. “The structure brings a huge ‘wow’ factor, but its welcoming communal spaces will bring the reinvented TMA to life for everyone.”
In addition to the two new dog parks and the creation of a transition with pedestrian plazas between the public park spaces and the Riverwalk, the project includes:
- Expanding the museum’s gross area from 69,000 to 125,000 square feet.
- Expanding the education space from 1,400 to more than 12,000 square feet, including a new auditorium, an education wing with four classrooms, a lobby, security entrance and orientation spaces. This will allow the museum to quadruple the number of students it serves from 6,000 to 24,000 per year.
- Grow exhibit space from 14,800 to more than 43,000 square feet.