By: Joanne Milani, Curator
C
all it young, busy and on the ball. The Florida Museum of Photographic Arts (FMOPA) is one of the newest and most energetic stars on the arts scene in Tampa Bay. How busy and much on the ball? Get ready for FMOPA’s exhibition that will bring you to exotic India, starting September 16.
all it young, busy and on the ball. The Florida Museum of Photographic Arts (FMOPA) is one of the newest and most energetic stars on the arts scene in Tampa Bay. How busy and much on the ball? Get ready for FMOPA’s exhibition that will bring you to exotic India, starting September 16.“Bhupendra Karia and Derry Moore: Stillness and Shadows/ Vintage Photographs of India,” which was recently seen in London, has photographs from the 1960s and 1970s from an Indian photographer and an English one. You’ll find this on the corner of Ashley Drive and Jackson Street. It’s open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 am to 5 pm.
Fast forward to November 18 and prepare to enjoy works from the most famous photographers of the 20th century such as Andy Warhol, Diane Arbus, Weegee and Walker Evans- to name just a few. “Naked City: Photographs from the Vassar College Collection” will stay in town through January 29, 2011.
Of course, photography is the easiest artistic medium to enjoy since everyone has a digital camera and everyone tries to use it. But the camera’s popularity as the definer of today’s visual vocabulary only partly explains the quick rise of what some people have called “the little museum that could.”
This young player on Tampa Bay’s arts scene was founded in 2001 by volunteers. It began life in Old Hyde Park Village as the nonprofit Tampa Gallery of Photographic Arts (TGPA). One of the founders, Chuck Levin, corralled area photography enthusiasts to mount intelligent, engaging exhibitions. It also started free workshops for at-risk children titled “Literacy Through Photography.”
In 2006, the board of directors voted to change the organization’s name to the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts. It’s a name that more accurately describes the organization’s statewide ambitions as well as its recognition by the IRS as a 501 (c)(3) charitable institution. FMOPA moved downtown the same year.
Four years later, museum membership has quadrupled to nearly 600 members, and the activities also have multiplied. To get an idea of all the shows, volunteer opportunities, photo safaris, photography classes for children and adults, lectures and the museum’s auction fund raiser, Photo Mojo, please visit www.fmopa.org.
FMOPA mounts six exhibitions annually, many of them critically acclaimed. Its exhibition, “Contemporary Chinese Photography,” won the award for “Best Museum Exhibition in 2009” from Creative Loafing. Add to this a growing roster of photography classes for kids and (especially) grown ups, and you might not be surprised to find the next world-famous photographer coming out of Tampa Bay.
The taxi driver called me “girlfriend” and “sweetheart” with the familiar sweetness of New Orleanians, so I figured I could ask a few personal questions. He was from the Lower Ninth Ward, one of the neighborhoods inundated by Katrina—a mostly poor, mostly black edge of the city isolated and imperiled by two manmade canals—and it had taken him three and a half years to return to New Orleans. He still wasn’t in his neighborhood, but he was back in the city, and his family was back, and they were determined to come back all the way.
