Throughout the summer, exhibitions will open at art institutions across the greater Tampa Bay area as part of Skyway: A Contemporary Collaboration 2024 and will feature several Ringling College of Art and Design community members. The multi-location exhibition will take place at the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg; The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art; the Tampa Museum of Art; The University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum; and Sarasota Art Museum of Ringling College of Art and Design. The exhibitions will feature multiple artists working in a myriad of mediums, including Ringling College faculty members, staff, and alumni, and Sarasota Art Museum of Ringling College of Art and Design staff members. 

Alum Cynthia Mason ’03, Graphic Interactive Communications, will exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg. Mason took inspiration and warning from the Pompeii catastrophe, drawing parallels with our current climate crisis in her room-sized, site-specific installation Secret Garden. The exhibition is curated by Katherine Pill, senior curator of contemporary art at MFA St. Pete.

The exhibition at the Tampa Museum of Art will feature works by Sarasota Art Museum’s Digital and Graphic Designer Samo Davis, Ringling College’s Fine Arts Department Head Joe Fig, Sarasota Art Museum Teaching Artist and Ringling alum Sami Harthoorn ’13, Photography and Imaging, and Ringling College Visiting Faculty in Fine Arts and Visual Studies Marina Shaltout, and is curated by the museum’s Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art Joanna Robotham. Davis will show a 12-foot installation titled I’m Alive that is one part sculpture and one part puppet. Fig will include work that illuminates the intimate world of art—from artists’ studios to the reception of museum-goers. Harthoorn’s photographs feature intimate portraits taken at a safe distance during the height of the pandemic, depicting the introspective nature of the period. Shaltout’s multimedia installation parodies the self-care market that targets women. 

At Sarasota Art Museum, Ringling College Fine Arts Faculty Eszter Sziksz will show works that she made or began during a residency in the Arctic Circle last year. Motion Design Faculty Member Jill Taffet’s augmented reality mural is inspired by science and the natural world. First Year Studio Program Faculty Rob Tarbell’s mixed media portraits combine smoke and porcelain with image-making processes. 

The Skyway exhibition has been giving a regional platform to the work of artists from the greater Tampa Bay area since 2017. In its first year, the exhibition took place across three institutions: Tampa Museum of Art, MFA St. Pete, and The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art. In 2020/21 USF Contemporary Art Museum joined. Now in its third iteration, the collaboration has added Sarasota Art Museum to its ranks. The exhibitions will open starting this month and show until late August, with Sarasota Art Museum’s exhibition opening fourth on July 28.