The Leepa-Rattner Museum sits deep within St. Petersburg College’s Tarpon Springs Campus, located at the corner of Klosterman Road and U.S. Highway 19 North in Tarpon Springs, Florida. Admission to the Museum is free to SPC students, $5 for adults, $4 for seniors, and also free for children under age 18.
The museum, which opened in 2002, is a magnificent architectural work of art in itself designed by E.C. Hoffman Jr. to simulate the bow of a ship as a tribute to Tarpon Springs’ fishing and sponging history.
The Collection
The Leepa-Rattner Museum owns approximately 6,000 works of art and periodically rotates the items on display. The bulk of the artwork was created by Abraham Rattner (1893-1978) and Allen Leepa (b. 1919), but the Museum also owns pieces by Picasso, Leonard Baskin, Dale Chihuly, and many others. “We have a wonderful collection,” says Larry Fineout, the Museum’s preparator, “We don’t just have the Leepa’s and the Rattner’s, we have many well-known artists’ work on display.”
Acquiring the Art
Larry Fineout has been with St. Petersburg College for about 20 years and has been the preparator since its inception. Larry, a cabinet maker by trade, is charged with creating the wonderful displays that hold many of the sculptured items in the museum and with framing and matting drawings and paintings on display.
Larry even helped to procure all of the pieces from the Leepa estate when they were donated. “They had six, six-by-eight-foot aluminum sheds throughout their property, full of artwork. We went through and pulled out all of the good stuff – because there were a couple of holes in roofs, it was hard to save everything, but we saved as much as we could,” Larry explained.
The Museum uses donations to restore the artwork at the cost of approximately $5,000 per piece.
The Museum Staff
In addition to Larry, the Museum is staffed by three full-time and three part-time employees and approximately 15-20 volunteers.
Leepa-Rattner’s director is Lynn Whitelaw and, like Larry, has been with the Museum from the beginning. “I started with the College in 1998 as the founding director of the then unbuilt museum.” Mr. Whitelaw holds a BA in Art History and Humanities and an MA in Art History from Florida State University.
Prior to his appointment as Leepa-Rattner’s Director, Mr. Whitelaw spent nine years as curator of education at the Tampa Museum of Art and even taught Non-Western Humanities at SPC in the late 1980’s.
Mr. Whitelaw’s goals for the future of the museum include expansion of physical space, growth in the quality and breadth of the museum’s holdings, and hopes that the Leepa-Rattner Museum “continues to grow in its service as a cultural, social and educational center for the visual arts in the Tampa Bay area
Upcoming Events
The museum hosts events and shows year-round featuring local, national, and international artists. Through January 7, 2007 the museum is hosting a collection of Picasso Ceramics. Other recent shows include “Weird and Wonderful Graphics by Leonard Baskin” and the Palm Harbor Chamber of Commerce Fine Arts, Crafts, and Music Festival.
The museum staff is most looking forward to its upcoming “Focus on Five” show celebrating Leepa-Rattner’s fifth anniversary. The show will bring out every piece of art that the museum owns. While this will take place in February 2007, preparations are already being made and staffers are trying to get the word out. “This is one show that the students need to see, because this is their show. The students own it,” said Larry Fineout. “It is going to be a show in itself.”
For a small yearly donation of $10, students can become members of the museum (although becoming a member isn’t required to visit the museum for free), then they will receive notices of upcoming events.
It’s easy to see that Leepa-Rattner’s staffers hold a passion for their work and for what the museum offers. Visitors to the area should take advantage of the opportunity to visit the Leepa-Rattner Museum located off US Hwy 19 in Tarpon Springs, Florida.
