Tampa Museum of Art
Poetry in Paint: The Artists of Old Tampa Bay
Selections from Alfred Frankel’s Artists of Old Florida, 1840-1960
August 18, 2022 – January 23, 2023
Collector Dr. Alfred Frankel has studied and collected the paintings of early Florida artists for the past 40 years. After meeting Michael Turbeville in the 1980s, an antiques dealer based in Tampa, he started to collect relatively unknown artists capturing Florida’s untamed landscape. To date, Dr. Frankel has acquired nearly 500 works of art. His holdings not only depict Florida’s raw beauty, but the collection reveals how local artists from Miami, Tampa, Orlando and Gainesville, were influential in developing art communities across the state in the early 20th century. Poetry in Paint: The Artists of Old Tampa Bay explores artists essential to the founding of the Tampa Bay area’s creative circles and features painters such as Harry Bierce, Theodore Coe, and Belle Weeden McNeer. Dr. Frankel has extensively researched the artists in his vast collection, which has resulted in the self-publication of the books Artists of Old Florida, 1840-1960 and The Dictionary of Florida Artists.
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