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Visit Largo's Gulf Coast Museum of Art while you can

In print: Sunday, September 7, 2008

A detail from Sa Sisaluemsak’s Intuiting Internal Love, 1998, a paper, clay, tar and acrylic work, at the Gulf Coast Museum of Art. The museum’s location in a fairly remote spot off Walsingham Road has added to budget troubles.
	[DOUGLAS R. CLIFFORD | Times Staff]

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When the Gulf Coast Museum of Art opened in the Pinewood Cultural Park in 1999, it was hailed as a venerable institution becoming new again.

It began as the Clearwater Museum in 1936, moved to Belleair about 1949 and along the way became the Florida Gulf Coast Art Center. It earned accreditation from the American Association of Museums when it opened in its current location.

But the location in a relatively remote spot off Walsingham Road in Largo never quite worked.

On Jan. 30, the museum will close, the victim of low attendance and a dwindling endowment. Officials, however, plan to use the time off to explore a new location, a new mission and even a new name as they pursue the goal of opening a new museum by 2012.

In the meantime, however, residents have several months to check out the museum's offerings:

• Victoria Block's "Narrations" is the current exhibit through Sept. 27. The Montreal resident winters in Florida and finds her inspiration in her diverse surroundings.

• More than 30 outdoor sculptures permanently installed on the museum complex grounds and interspersed within the neighboring Florida Botanical Gardens.

• Six permanent collection galleries displaying a diverse representation of art by contemporary Florida artists and makers of fine crafts from across the Southeast.