With the new Tampa Museum of Art slated to open to the public this weekend, local residents are anticipating its unveiling with the tentative eagerness of a post-op plastic surgery patient. What’s under the bandages, so to speak, is likely here to stay — and probably of profound import for Tampa’s civic and cultural identity going forward. This makeover — perhaps truly more of a full-blown reincarnation, given both the trauma that preceded TMA’s reopening and, frankly, the breathtaking success of its new embodiment — has been a long time coming.

By now the story has assumed the familiarity of folklore: once upon a time, (too) ambitious political leadership commissioned a high-priced design for a new museum from a famous architect; after a change in the political winds, chaos ensued: the flashy design was canned, a museum director was fired and a board of directors grappled with a new mayor and dismal prospects for a new home. As an interim solution, the museum moved to a historic building in West Tampa, fading from view and seeming to reconfirm in its disappearance one of the city’s foundational myths: that Tampa can’t ever seem to get anything fucking right.

This article appears in Jan 27 – Feb 2, 2010.