Photos by Megan Voeller

The new Tampa Museum of Art, now slated to open to the public in early 2010, inches closer toward completion each day on downtown Tampa’s riverfront. Close observers will note that the building’s distinctive cladding—a double layer of perforated metal sheets offset to create a moiré pattern on the structure’s surface—has begun to be installed. Within days, the building’s air conditioning system should be active; museum staff may begin to move in as soon as November.

Now that more than the building’s skeleton is in place, TMA director Todd Smith leads three or four hardhat tours of the structure each week (one reason why he’s looking forward to the imminent addition of air conditioning). At 66,000 sq. ft., the new museum is the right size for the community, Smith explains as we stand in the sky-lighted atrium. (That square footage, roughly on par with the expanded Museum of Fine Arts and the proposed new Dali Museum, which is expected to weigh in at 75,000 sq. ft., seems to be a sweet spot for the region.)

This article appears in Jun 10-16, 2009.