Florida Museum of Photographic Arts brings a wide photographic history to Tampa’s Ybor City

The Florida Museum of Photographic Arts, known as FMoPA, has made photography its central subject since its founding in Tampa in 2001. The museum was established by Cynthia L. Flowers, Charles J. Levin and Vincent Sorrentino, a New York art dealer who was living in Tampa at the time. Its first home was a storefront in Old Hyde Park Village, where Sorrentino curated many of the organization’s early exhibitions.

In 2023, FMoPA moved to Ybor City. The relocation places an institution focused on photographic art in one of Tampa’s distinctive historic districts while maintaining its broader role as an exhibition and educational organization. The museum’s stated focus is photography as an important part of contemporary life and culture.

FMoPA’s work extends beyond gallery exhibitions. Its activities have included photography courses for adults and youth, outreach initiatives, an Annual Members’ Show and an International Photography Competition. Together, those programs create several ways for people to engage with photography: as viewers, students, participants and exhibiting artists.

The museum also maintains a growing permanent collection. Among the works identified in the collection is a suite by Harold Edgerton made using the strobe light, an invention associated with his photographic work. The collection includes celebrity portraits by Len Prince, a work by Dorothea Lange and Judy Dater’s portrait of Ansel Adams. It also contains scenes of Pittsburgh by Charles “Teenie” Harris.

For readers interested in the ways photography has represented bodies and identity, the collection’s connection to Dianora Niccolini is especially notable. FMoPA holds a body of her work, and the source describes Niccolini as a pioneer in photographing the male nude. That presence offers a point of entry into the museum’s holdings for audiences considering how photographic art has approached portraiture, the body and the boundaries of representation. The available description does not identify Niccolini’s work as LGBTQ-specific, but it does place the male nude within the museum’s account of photographic history.

FMoPA’s story is therefore both local and expansive: it began in a Tampa storefront, developed programming for adults and young people, and built a collection spanning experimental technique, celebrity portraiture, documentary scenes and the nude. Its move to Ybor City in 2023 marks the latest location in an institutional history that remains rooted in Tampa.

Source and reuse information This automatically generated backgrounder adapts text from “Florida Museum of Photographic Arts” on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Museum_of_Photographic_Arts The adapted text is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-SA 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. The source article’s linked references are provided below where available. This story has not been independently reviewed or fact-checked. Image rights Photograph description: Looking down at 7th Avenue, Ybor City, from the roof of the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts building at 1630 E 7th Ave, next to the Kress Contemporary building, in Tampa, Florida, United States, at night on 30 April 2023. Creator: MatthewHoobin. License: CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0). Original image page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3A7th_Avenue_in_Ybor_City_at_night%2C_from_the_roof_of_the_Florida_Museum_of_Photographic_Arts%2C_Tampa%2C_Florida%2C_US%2C_30_April_2023.jpg. The image was resized for display; no other changes were made.