Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art, Art museum at St. Petersburg College in Tarpon Springs, Florida.
The Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art is an art museum in Tarpon Springs, Florida, spread across three buildings on the college campus. The collection includes modern and contemporary artworks such as paintings, sculptures, and decorative objects created by artists from different backgrounds.
The museum stems from Allen Leepa's 1996 gift of art to St. Petersburg College, then a two-year community college. Leepa, an abstract expressionist who taught at Michigan State University from 1945 to 1983, was the stepson of Abraham Rattner and son of sculptor Esther Gentle; after his mother's death he inherited Rattner's estate. A further group of over 2,000 works passed from the Tampa Museum of Art to the new museum before it opened.
The museum is named after Allen Leepa and his stepfather Abraham Rattner, whose estate Leepa inherited after his mother Esther Gentle's death. Rattner's own works make up over 60% of the collection, spanning lithographs, tapestries, sculptures, clay works, paintings and stained glass. Pieces by Picasso, Moore, Chagall and Max Ernst are kept in storage and shown only from time to time.
The complex includes exhibition spaces, an art education center, and a research library spread across the campus. Visitors should allow time to explore all three buildings and can ask staff about current exhibitions and programs available.
The 53,000-square-foot complex holds the museum, the Ellis Foundation Art Education Center and the Michael M. Bennett Library, designed so the three buildings appear pressed together. In 2012 the Florida chapter of the American Institute of Architects listed the building under "Florida Architecture: 100 Years. 100 Places."
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