Best Of 2021

The MFA

The Museum of Fine Arts in St. Pete seriously upped its game with a 2020 museum remodel that stretched across 18 galleries, covering 12,000 square feet of space. It’s almost like visiting a completely different museum now. With the galleries arranged chronologically, viewing the permanent collection is like walking through art history. Alternatively, grab a themed brochure and search the galleries for artwork on different subjects, like animals and insects. So the next time you host visitors from out of town, don’t just take them to The Dalí. Take them to the MFA, too, and show them all that Tampa Bay’s art scene has to offer. mfastpete.org

Best of the Bay 2021 Arts & Entertainment: Creative Loafing Tampa Bay's 2021 readers and critics pick the best in local theater, poets, museums and so much more.

Best of the Bay 2021 Arts & Entertainment


Winner: M. Catherine Wynkoop

Runners-Up: Jadyn Mills “Lend Me a Tenor,” Eugenie Bondurant

Tony Krol

As we interviewed Tampa Bay’s Black artists for our Spring Arts Preview, Tony Krol’s name kept coming up. Krol worked with several Black artists in 2020, created murals with them, provided space for them to show their work, and brought them into conversations about curation. The collaborations introduced Tampa Bay to the Black Activist Photographers and New Roots Art Collective. They brought us Tampa’s Black Lives Matter street mural, “Cultural Currency” at Peninsularium, and “Black Storm” at Cafe Hey. Krol knows that Tampa’s diversity is one of its greatest assets, and he’s making sure that diversity is well-represented in Tampa’s art galleries and streets. mergeculture.com

Elizabeth Brincklow

Brincklow was born with an unfair advantage. You see, her mother Martha taught “arts and ideas” to generations of students at Dunedin High School. This cultural cocoon launched her to the FSU School of Theatre and the study of mime in Paris. Imaginative gigs in D.C. and NYC forged her keen skills. But the trail she’s blazed across disciplines with major artists over the past three decades since returning to Pinellas County is unmatched. She strategically developed St. Pete’s cultural scene, crafted Creative Pinellas’ grants program and shepherded Dunedin’s Public Art Master Plan and implementation of significant installations. brincklow-arts.com

Winner:Naked Came the Florida Man” by Tim Dorsey

Runners-Up: Dogs of the Burg” by Urban Dog Studio, “Curveball at the Crossroads” by Michael Lortz

Winner: Mayven Missbehavin

Runners-Up: Femmes and Follies, Janinie Fatone-Butler