TAMPA, FL.-The Tampa Museum of Art presents The Art Guys: Seeing Double – January 20 – April 15, 2007. The Art Guys: Seeing Double is a survey of Michael Galbreth’s and Jack Massing’s nearly 25-year collaborative career. The exhibition—with some works created specifically for this exhibition while others are previously-exhibited favorites—focuses on their self-portraiture and self-promotion as seen in drawings, photographs, video and sculpture. The exhibition is organized by independent curator Jade Dellinger for the Tampa Museum of Art.

In conjunction with The Art Guys: Seeing Double exhibition, and in collaboration with The Tampa Museum of Art, the alternative art space Flight 19, located at 601 N. Nebraska Avenue at the Union Train Station baggage claim building, will present a newly created, site-specific sculptural installation by the artists, entitled Valise Voyage. This project at Flight 19 will run concurrently with the Tampa Museum of Art's exhibition and will be open to the public for free Saturdays and Sundays from 12 - 4 p.m., as well as by appointment. For more information about Flight 19 and The Art Guys’ Valise Voyage exhibition, visit www.experimentalskeleton.com, or call 813/247-2030.

About the Artists: Michael Galbreth and Jack Massing began their offbeat collaborative antics at the University of Houston in 1983. Working together on simple objects, complex installations and Fluxus-inspired performances, The Art Guys explore the absurdities of everyday life while poking fun at the art world. Largely defying categorization, they have been described as “a kink in the art historical continuum - a hiccup, a scratch that can't be itched,” or simply, "part Dada, part David Letterman." No subject seems to be outside their grasp, from selling birdhouses alongside the interstate to turning food into art. Through humor and hijinks, The Art Guys thrive on exposing new audiences to art.

The Art Guys last appeared in Tampa, FL, during their SUITS: The Clothes Make the Man project which concluded with a catwalk fashion show in New York’s Times Square, a downtown Houston two-man parade (with Budweiser bikini girls and police escorts) and a book by the same name (Abrams, 2000), in which the noted critic Dave Hickey characterized Massing and Galbreth as the “impudent Pimpernels of post-conceptual performance art.” The Art Guys are based in Houston, TX, and have been celebrated with major exhibitions at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, in 1995 and at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in 2001. Most recently, The Art Guys have focused on three high-profile public art commissions. The Art Guys designed one for the Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport, another for Houston Intercontinental Airport (which consists of 360 cast fiberglass suitcases that glow with changing colors), and their impressive Video Ring, a $400,000 public art project at George Bush Intercontinental Airport that features 80 thirty-six-inch television monitors placed in a circle 11 feet off the ground, displaying a rotating sequence of video images with a sound component.

Funding for the Tampa Museum of Art’s exhibition is provided by Starbucks Coffee Company and Psychological Assessment Resources, Inc. The members’ opening reception for The Art Guys: Seeing Double is on Friday, January 19, 2007, from 6 – 8 p.m., followed by Art After Dark with Starbucks, where the theme of January’s event will be “seeing double.” Visitors are invited to bring a friend and dress alike to receive a special two-for-one admission ($10). Members always receive free admission.

The Tampa Museum of Art recently selected architect Stanley Saitowitz of San Francisco, CA, to design a new museum facility in Curtis Hixon Park in downtown Tampa. Museum officials expect to begin site work in late 2007, and the opening of phase one of the new facility is anticipated by late 2008 or early 2009.