Tampa Bay Skyway Art Exhibit Returns May 22 With 49 Artists

TAMPA, FL — Four regional art museums - the Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg, The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, the Tampa Museum of Art and the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum - announced the opening of Skyway 20/21: A Contemporary Collaboration.

Initiated in 2017 as a celebration of the talent and diversity of contemporary artists working in the Tampa Bay region, this second iteration Skyway 20/21 builds on the institutional alliance and cultural partnership celebrating the diversity and talent of artists in the Tampa Bay area.

Due to the challenging circumstances of the global health pandemic COVID-19, Skyway 20/21 was postponed from its original date last summer to allow for the artists and their work to be fully celebrated.

Skyway 20/21 features the work of 49 artists and art collectives working in Hillsborough, Manatee, Pinellas and Sarasota counties. Following an open call for submissions, the artists were selected by the museum curators and guest juror Claire Tancons, an independent curator and scholar whose practice takes a global focus on the conditions of cultural production.

Tancons offers her vision of this unique curatorial and cultural partnership in her curatorial essay, which is included in the fully illustrated catalog accompanying the exhibition.

“In order to get closer to Tampa Bay as a natural and cultural ecosystem, I would like to present and test the idea of the museum as mangrove and of the exhibition as rhizome," she said. "By considering time and history, we might gain a little distance from and, at the same time, apprehend more wholesomely the strictures of space.

“Both aerial and subterranean, terrestrial and aquatic, rhizomes need not choose one environment over another as they simultaneously absorb the diurnal and nocturnal atmospheres offered above and below the horizon of visual perception," Tancons said. "A rhizomatic exhibition likewise embraces proximate and contrary elements, like-minded and opposite ideas, circumventing conceptual divergences and cutting across stylistic preferences to form a creative ecosystem, inclusive of the widest variety of artistic species.”

Skyway 20/21 Venues And Artists:

Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, May 22 to Aug. 22

Robert Aiosa, Dolores Coe, Keith Crowley, Becky Flanders, Dakota Gearhart, Bassmi Ibrahim, Morgan Janssen, Ezra Johnson, Karl Kelly, Savannah Magnolia, Jon Notwick, Lynne Railsback, Gabriel Ramos, Matthew Wicks and Janelle Young

The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota

June 20 to Sept. 26

Carrie Boucher, Ya Levy La’ford, Kalup Linzy, Noelle Mason, OK! Transmit, Eric Ondina, Heather Rosenbach and Jake Troyli

Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa

June 3 to Oct. 10

Jaime Aelavanthara + Amanda Sieradzki, Kim Anderson, Wendy Babcox, Janet Folsom, Samson Huang, Cassia Kite, Jason Lazarus, Jenn Miller, Sarah O’Donoghue, Herion Park, Anat Pollack, Libbi Ponce, Selina Román, John Sims, Mike Solomon, Jill Taffet and Kirk Ke Wang

USF Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa

June 14 to Sept. 1

Rosemarie Chiarlone, Danny Dobrow, Babette Herschberger, Akiko Kotani, Cynthia Mason, Ry McCullough, Casey McDonough and Kodi Thompson

The full-color Skyway 20/21 exhibition catalog with curatorial essays and information about the participating artists is supported by Brown & Brown Insurance and The Stanton Storer Embrace the Arts Foundation. Skyway 20/21 catalogues will be available for purchase at exhibition venues.

USFCAM-Related Events:

• Online panel discussion Thursday, June 17 from 6 to 7:30 p.m. on Zoom. Register here.

Join this online program to hear from four artists featured in USFCAM’s Skyway 20/21: A Contemporary Collaboration. Artists Danny Dobrow, Babette Herschberger, Akiko Kotani and Casey McDonough will discuss material investigations and transformations within their creative practice in dialogue with Sarah Howard, curator of public art and social practice.

• Online panel discussion Thursday, July 1 from 6 to 7:30 p.m. on Zoom. Register here.

Join this online program to hear from four artists featured in USFCAM’s Skyway 20/21: A Contemporary Collaboration. Artists Rosemarie Chiarlone, Cynthia Mason, Ry McCullough and Kodi Thompson will discuss their process for developing their unique visual language and how it imbeds and expands meaning in their practice. It is moderated by Sarah Howard.

• Skyway 20/21: A Contemporary Collaboration – Closing Reception Friday, Aug. 27 from 7 to 9 p.m. at the USF Contemporary Art Museum

Join USFCAM for a celebration and opportunity to experience Skyway 20/21: A Contemporary Collaboration featuring the work of Rosemarie Chiarlone, Danny Dobrow, Babette Herschberger, Akiko Kotani, Cynthia Mason, Ry McCullough, Casey McDonough and Kodi Thompson. Skyway 20/21 is a joint exhibition presented in partnership with the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg; The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota; and the Tampa Museum of Art.

Skyway: A Contemporary Collaboration 20/21 is made possible with funding from the City of St. Petersburg, Office of Cultural Affairs; Florida Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs; the Gobioff Foundation; Gulf Coast Community Foundation; The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art Foundation; Dr. Allen Root; Arthur F. and Ulla R. Searing Ringling Endowment; Tampa Museum of Art Foundation; and the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum Lee and Victor Leavengood Endowment.