Community Calendar

Sam Hamilton/Sam Tam Ham (b. 1984, Auckland, New Zealand/Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa) created Te Moana Meridian as a vessel for proposing a radical new United Nations General Assembly Draft Resolution to formally relocate the prime meridian from Greenwich, London, to Te Moana-Nui-ā-Kiwa/the South Pacific Ocean. Since its inception at an 1884 conference in Washington D.C., the prime meridian has functioned to implicitly serve the ambitions of the British colonial empire. Rather than serving as a "beacon of humanity," the prime meridian today more resembles a bygone imperial relic. As an original operatic performance and five-channel video installation, Te Moana Meridian proposes to elect a new "center of the world" while acknowledging that doing so has the potential to reframe the dynamics of global power.

Celebrate the art of wine! Join us for Uncorked, SAM's new monthly wine tasting series. Each event features a new and exciting selection of six wines as well as gourmet cheeses. Learn about the curated selection through a guided presentation led by 99 Bottles Owner Mark Tuchman and enjoy a full glass of wine of your choice following the presentation. Bottles will be available for purchase.

About 99 Bottles
Founded in April 2019, 99 Bottles is about the experience of extraordinary liquid. Built by a team of passionate hospitality professionals, 99 Bottles delivers an experience where there's not a bad drink in the place. 99 Bottles is what happens when someone who loves great libations lets his imagination run wild. A beer bar where “what if we put this on draft?” becomes “why didn’t we think of that sooner?” The place where world-class pilsners share a tap list with Rosé All Day, hazy IPAs, and Dom Perignon. A world where kombucha has a tap and so does prosecco – whatever your taste, this is where you find your new favorite. Like Willy Wonka’s factory meets an art gallery for beer & wine lovers – and every exhibit is meant to be tasted!

PRICING
$50 for Members | $60 for Not-Yet Members
Advance tickets required. Space is limited. Cancellations received with less than 48-hour notice are non-refundable.

Go nose to nose with Big John, the World’s Largest Triceratops, in an immersive and playful dinosaur exhibit at the Glazer Children’s Museum in Downtown Tampa. Whether you have a child at home or not, all are welcome to visit this colossal exhibit, 66 million years in the making.

Museum Minis with Tombolo Books invites children ages 0 to 5 years old and their favorite grownups to join us in the galleries every third Wednesday for an art-filled storytime! From shapes to colors and artists to animals, there is always something fun to discover at the MFA.

La Grande Illusion is a major exhibition of works by internationally acclaimed artist, Brian Maguire. The exhibition spans two decades of work that spotlights the artist’s lifelong quest to draw attention to global injustices, war, and human rights. One of Ireland's leading cultural figures, Maguire has turned the practice and tradition of painting into acts of visual testimony. Maguire’s paintings are global in scope and are derived from projects undertaken between 2007 and 2024 in Mexico, the Mediterranean, Syria, Sudan, the United States, and the Amazon. Maguire's artworks are painted from direct experience and involve the artist spending extensive time on the ground with the communities that welcome him. The results are, plainly put, paintings that visualize the commonality of human suffering and dramatize the plight of people in need.

New works by Selina Román blend photography, abstraction, and self-portraiture to explore themes of beauty and the politics of size in Selina Román: Abstract Corpulence. Roman’s photographs feature tightly cropped images of the artist’s own body, boldly occupying the full composition and extending past the boundaries of each frame. Pastel bodysuits and tights transform the artist’s flesh into new, gently rolling landscapes as amorphous shapes converge to create modernist-inspired compositions. At this scale, Roman’s tightly cropped portrayals of stomachs, thighs, and hips become formal studies of line, shape and color, asking viewers to consider the human form from a point of true abstraction. The softly hued palette created by the artist’s bodysuits lends itself to narratives around the aesthetics of femininity. Displayed as a colorful never-before-seen installation, Roman’s photographs transform the gallery into a space of quiet resistance, subverting traditional ideas of feminine beauty.

Selina Román: Abstract Corpulence is organized by Sarasota Art Museum of Ringling College of Art and Design and curated by Rangsook Yoon, senior curator at Sarasota Art Museum.

Image credit: Selina Román (American, 1978). Blockhead 1, 2025. Dye sublimation on aluminum, 40 x 50 in. Courtesy of the artist.

Sarasota Art Museum shines a spotlight on Art Deco as the artform celebrates its centennial anniversary. Art Deco: The Golden Age of Illustration showcases 100 rare posters from the Crouse Collection created by some of the world’s earliest master graphic designers during the 1920s and 1930s.

During the 1920s, a bold new artistic style roared to life: Art Deco. This exciting, dramatic, and glamorous new genre bid farewell to the soft, organic forms of Art Nouveau and soon took the world by storm. One of Art Deco’s most significant contributions was the art of printed graphics, giving birth to the disciplines of illustration and typography that permeate our world today.

Featuring subjects ranging from automobiles, airlines, and ocean liners to drinks and tobacco, the works represented in Art Deco: The Golden Age of Illustration celebrate modernity, dynamism, and luxury—the dreams and desires of the turbulent early twentieth century.

In addition to the iconic posters, Art Deco: The Golden Age of Illustration conjures the era’s design aesthetic with selected sculptural works and cocktail shakers from the Crouse Collection, and Art Deco furniture pieces on loan from the Wolfsonian Museum at Florida International University in Miami.

Art Deco: The Golden Age of Illustration is organized by Sarasota Art Museum of Ringling College of Art and Design and curated by Rangsook Yoon, senior curator at Sarasota Art Museum.

Image credit: Installation view of Art Deco: The Golden Age of Illustration at Sarasota Art Museum, Sarasota, Florida, 2025. Photo: Ryan Gamma.

Sam Hamilton/Sam Tam Ham (b. 1984, Auckland, New Zealand/Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa) created Te Moana Meridian as a vessel for proposing a radical new United Nations General Assembly Draft Resolution to formally relocate the prime meridian from Greenwich, London, to Te Moana-Nui-ā-Kiwa/the South Pacific Ocean. Since its inception at an 1884 conference in Washington D.C., the prime meridian has functioned to implicitly serve the ambitions of the British colonial empire. Rather than serving as a "beacon of humanity," the prime meridian today more resembles a bygone imperial relic. As an original operatic performance and five-channel video installation, Te Moana Meridian proposes to elect a new "center of the world" while acknowledging that doing so has the potential to reframe the dynamics of global power.

Encaustic paint, an ancient art medium made from melted wax and pigment, is incredibly versatile. There are so many ways it can be manipulated – painting, layering, embedding, incising, mark-making, and sculpting, just to name a few. Whether this is your first foray into the medium or you’re an experienced encaustic artist, together we will explore the world of encaustics and take your work to the next level! This eight-week course for beginning and advanced students will focus on incising, layering, mark-making, pigment sticks, mixed media collage, mono-types, and 3D works. Come join us for a waxy adventure!

Ages 55+ | Beginner-Intermediate Level

Wednesdays, Sep 10 - Nov 15 | 1:00–4:00 PM (8 classes)
(No class 10/8)

Go nose to nose with Big John, the World’s Largest Triceratops, in an immersive and playful dinosaur exhibit at the Glazer Children’s Museum in Downtown Tampa. Whether you have a child at home or not, all are welcome to visit this colossal exhibit, 66 million years in the making.