Arts

St. Petersburg Museum of Fine Arts undergoing renovation

ST. PETERSBURG

Gone soon will be the drab linen wall coverings and stained carpets that muted the beauty of the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg. A $300,000 facelift is under way at the institution on Beach Drive NE, in preparation for its 50th anniversary in 2015, and continues …

Last chance to see Pearlstein exhibit at Museum of Fine Arts

If you haven't seen "Philip Pearlstein's People, Places, Things" at the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, go very soon. Sunday is the last call for the show. Pearlstein has led the revival, beginning in the 1960s, of realism and his famous paintings of nudes have influenced generations of younger artists. The museum …

Sip and stroll at Dunedin's Second Friday Wine/Art Walk

Dunedin's Second Friday Wine/Art Walk is this Friday with more than 40 venues, including lots of art galleries, open along and around its historic Main Street and the Pinellas Trail from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Wristbands ($10) will get you special offers from merchants. At the same time, Clay and Paper, 362 Main St., will …

Show of emerging Chinese artists may debut at Tampa Museum of Art

Todd Smith has a plan, and if it works, a landmark exhibition will debut at the Tampa Museum of Art in June 2014.

Rembrandt painting comes to life in flash mob

We know that you probably won't be jetting to Amsterdam this weekend to visit the Rijksmuseum (state museum) that just reopened after a magnificent renovation costing hundreds of millions of dollars. One of its most famous paintings is Rembrandt's The Night Watch, completed in 1642. But here's what you can …

Start the summer with shows art galleries

Lots of galleries are featuring lots of group shows for the summer. Two are Gallery 221 on the Dale Mabry campus of Hillsborough Community College in Tampa and Dabbert Gallery in Sarasota. Each is near great shopping and eating. Gallery 221 isn't far from either the West Shore neighborhood or International Plaza. …

The nanny with a camera at Tampa's museum of photography

TAMPA

People live and die in obscurity all the time, and rarely do their stories take on second lives. Vivian Maier is that rare exception. She seemingly left nothing of herself behind when she died at 83 in 2009 except for the memories of the children for whom she was a nanny over the decades, the surviving …

4 shows open at Art Center Sarasota

Four shows open today with a free reception from 5 to 7 p.m. at Art Center Sarasota, 707 N Tamiami Trail: "African Nouveau — Sculptures of Woodrow Nash"; "The Leaf and the Textile — A Community Project by Jackie Peters Cully"; "Inaugural Black Box Projects — Installation by Zachary See"; and "New Works …

Annual show switches to art quilts

BY LENNIE BENNETT

Times Art Critic

The Dunedin Fine Art Center is mixing things up a bit for its annual summer quilt show.

Review: Tampa Museum of Art exhibit lets us see Havana crumbling

TAMPA

Dying slowly is a messy, painful and sad process. And we see those things in "Faded Elegance: Photographs of Havana by Michael Eastman" at the Tampa Museum of Art, which shows us the Cuban capital's magnificent old buildings in horrific decline. Some will see great beauty in the photographs, too (and they …