Tampa native Amy Dao is the new director at Sulphur Springs Museum and Heritage Center

The Sulphur Springs neighborhood’s beacon of history and heritage, the Sulphur Springs Museum, has brought in the new year with a new museum director.

Amy Dao is a Tampa native who started her career with the museum as an intern in 2021. After taking the reins and diving into what she hopes is a new start for the museum, Dao has her eyes on improvement and growth.

The Sulphur Springs Museum and Heritage Center has long acted as representation of the rich and diverse history. Opened in 2010, the museum has maintained a vision of wanting to highlight history and supplement and educate the community, all while working towards a preserved natural environment and upward economic growth.
Dao completed her previous internship with the museum before heading to the University of San Francisco to complete her last semester of school, capping off her Master’s in Museum Studies.

Joining the museum once again, Dao is now responsible for much of the day-to-day operations, managing the volunteers the museum runs on, planning exhibitions and events and making sure everything runs smoothly.

“I want the museum to be a place that still serves the community by preserving the history of Sulphur Springs, also a place that can attract a more diverse audience,” Dao said.

Dao told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay she’s been aiming to resolve some of the uncertainties the museum faced amid and due to the pandemic. Low visitation and engagement rates remained a top concern in the height of the public health crisis. The largest visitor demographic tends to be an older audience, too, she said. Another one of her hopes going forward is to engage a younger crowd and extend all the museum has to offer across more generations.

More engaging events and reinstating the museum speakers series have been among the revamps made to the museum in the hopes of bringing in visitors.

“I want them to leave with more knowledge and an interest in coming back to learn more,” she said.

Although museum events haven’t yet brought in the numbers they were seeing prior to the pandemic, Dao is still hopeful. With each event, she sees more guests attend and a bigger future for the museum.

The Sulphur Springs Museum—located in Mann-Wagon Memorial Park at 1101 E. River Cove St. in Tampa—is free to visit and open to guests Wednesday-Saturday from 11 a.m.-4 p.m. More information about the museum and upcoming and present exhibitions can be found sulphurspringsmuseum.org.