A Long Road to Tampa Museum of Art Opening

Staircase at the new Tampa Art Museum

On Saturday, the doors of the new Tampa Museum of Art open to the public. Efforts to build the museum have spanned two city administrations, two architects and taken almost a decade of wheeling and dealing.

The new riverfront Curtis Hixon Park is the front yard for the Tampa Museum of Art. And the museum’s front door is all glass, as are the walls -- so you can see straight through the building as you enter.

On a recent tour of the new museum, marketing director Nancy Kipnis talked about the surprising warmth of the space.

Kipnis pointed out the museum’s newly acquired 800 pound colorful mobile by Alexander Calder. But that’s the only art visible – the exhibition rooms are on the second floor and being kept “secret” until the public opening. There’s also a café and store on the ground floor that overlook the river.

The sleek, clean design of the Saitowitz’s cantilevered building belies the rocky road traveled to build Tampa’s art museum.

That journey starts back during Mayor Dick Greco’s administration when architect Rafael Vinoly was selected to design a new museum twice the size.

Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio took office in April 2003 and quickly honed in on the museum’s potential costs.

“The museum had the expectation, because that’s what they’d been told by the previous administration, that this would be built and the city would help fund the operational costs with no upper limit,” Iorio said.

The city had promised $20 million toward the project and the museum board was supposed to raise the balance of the $56 milllion price tag for the Vinoly design. But they couldn’t raise the difference.

“They did the best they could and they got a lot of pledges,” she said. “But in the very end those pledges had to be transformed into a bank loan and in the end that just wasn’t possible.”

Additionally, the museum’s operating expenses were projected at almost $7 million annually and Iorio didn’t want the city on the hook beyond its yearly $1 million subsidy.

“I think the controversy probably lasted too long. For that, I regret. But it finally got to the point once the business plan was established we could all see the numbers really weren’t going to work for this museum and it was not financially feasible,” she said.

“And you know the museum people are all great people and I like them all very much and I think we’re all in a good place about the whole issue, but as a mayor I have a different role to play.”

Iorio says her role is to protect the financial interests of the city. So she shelved the Vinoly design, even though the architect got paid in full.

Iorio gives credit to the relatively new chairwoman of the museum board at the time, Cornelia Corbett, for working to find a solution.

“Let me say something about Cornie Corbett -- I give her all the credit in the world for how she handled this. She picked up the pieces and she said we’re going to work together and we’re going to find a solution,” Iorio said.

“Cornie” Corbett says she was surprised when the Vinoly museum was, in her words, “abandoned.”

“I thought we were going to break ground within 3-4 months so I thought my job was just going to be cheerleader and following through on all the different plans already been laid out,” she said.

“So that first five months it was pretty amazing how it all sort of fell apart around me and then I had just become chair I didn’t feel it was right to walk away.”

Corbett never considered giving up.

“Number one, I’m stubborn.”

The mayor says there were numerous meetings – tense but always professional. Eventually the city and museum board settled on a site along the north border of the park. The museum board selected Saitowitz as the new architect. Plans were scaled down to 66,000 square feet phase one.

The building we have today as beautiful and wonderful and spacious as it is today it is approximately half the size of the original Vinoly,” Corbett said. “So right there you have a huge difference in cost not only to build but operate.”

The Saitowitz design cost $31 million. The city paid $18.5 million of that. There is a master plan to build a second separate gallery space in the future. But for now, Corbett is satisfied.

“It’s a feeling of immense joy and awe, it was goosebumpy. It’s so exciting,” she said.

How exciting the public can judge for itself on Saturday when the museum opens.

The Tampa Museum of Art's debut is Saturday morning beginning at 10:30 with an unveiling ceremony. Activities are planned from 11 to 3 on the plaza. The museum will be open from 11 to 7.