TAMPA, FLA.- The Tampa Museum of Art announced the opening of Tableau and Transformation: Photography from the Permanent Collection on view June 20 through October 6, 2019.

Tableau and Transformation presents an overview of the Tampa Museum of Art’s holdings in 20th-century photography, a cornerstone of the Museum’s permanent collection. The exhibition looks at how artists have used distinct darkroom effects and studio practices to create new narratives in photography. Artists such as James Casebere, Robert Cumming, Stephen Frailey, Sandy Skoglund, and William Wegman create constructed environments, often blurring the boundaries of truth and fiction in their images. Photographers Blythe Bohnen, Duane Michals, Arnulf Rainer, Lucas Samaras, Cindy Sherman examine the transformation of one’s self as a means to explore identity, gender, and place.

This exhibition features approximately 50 photographs with objects ranging in date from the mid-1960s to through the early 2000s. Predominately drawn from the Museum’s permanent collection, Tableau and Transformation includes artists John Baldessari, Morton Bartlett, Zeke Berman, Blythe Bohnen, Victor Burgin, James Casebere, Eileen Cowin, Robert Cumming, Robert Fichter, Stephen Frailey, Les Krims, Duane Michals, Patrick Nagatani and Andreé Tracey, Arnulf Rainer, Richard Ross, Lucas Samaras, Andres Serrano, Cindy Sherman, Sandy Skoglund, Joel Sternfeld, and William Wegman. Tableau and Transformation also features key loans from Trenam Law’s photography collection and includes companion photographs by several of the above-mentioned artists, as well as Laurie Simmons and Doug and Mike Starn.

As the Tampa Museum of Art nears its 100th anniversary, exhibitions in 2019 and 2020 focus on the breadth of the institution’s permanent collection, as well as examine its collecting history. The Tampa Museum of Art’s holdings are unique, with collections of Greek and Roman antiquities, as well as modern and contemporary art.

Joanna Robotham, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, states, “Many of the photographs featured in Tableau and Transformation have not been on view for 25 years. It is exciting for me to mine our collection and share with our audience the phenomenal photographs the Museum has acquired over the course of time. Additionally, I am pleased to include a selection of works from Trenam Law’s holdings and to highlight the shared history of our two photography collections.”