TAMPA, FL.- This summer and early fall the Tampa Museum of Art will showcase What Does This Mean? The Narrative Tradition, the last in a series of three special exhibitions organized to provide visitors with an opportunity to engage in issues and ideas raised by the museum’s permanent collection. What Does This Mean? The Narrative Tradition, on view July 22 - October 1, 2006, will encourage visitors to actively look at how we construct meaning from such elements as images, words, associations, and metaphors.

This exhibition series was made possible by a 2004 Museums for America grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). According to Tampa Museum of Art Interim Executive Director Ken Rollins, “The Tampa Museum of Art is honored to have been selected for this prestigious award and we look forward to applying the information we learn to our mission of promoting lifelong learning.”

The 56 works of art featured in this exhibition will encourage visitors to identify the processes of construction and deconstruction that often take place in understanding artwork. Because artists choose a variety of methods to construct narratives and visual literacy in their work, sub-themes such as “What are the Ways to Construct a Story?,” “What Happened?,” and “Fact or Fiction: Is It Real, Imaginary, or Fake?” are also explored. Core objects from the museum’s permanent collection and outside loans from regional collections such as The John and Mable Ringling Museum and the Margulies Collection in Miami, as well as prominent national museums and galleries, will fill the exhibition.

Some artists juxtapose words with pictures to invoke a reaction or question a viewer’s interpretation of images, such as the photographs of Duane Michals and Barbara Kruger, or the prints of Carrie Mae Weems. Other artists, like Jenny Holzer, use words alone as the subject of their artwork. Still other artists rely simply on images to imply a story, such as Eric Fischl and Ruth Orkin. Video by Tony Oursler and photographs by James Casebere and Jerry Uelsmann will explore artifice through photographic sets and models while surrealist images by Kenny Scharf and Joel-Peter Witkin will offer alternative realities.

The Narrative Tradition also will be explored through scenes depicted on Greek vases from the museum’s permanent collection of Greek and Roman antiquities. These narrative scenes and mythological creatures represent aspects of Greek mythology first recorded in Greek literature.

“Organizing three exhibitions within a one-year period has provided fascinating opportunities for the museum to explore and refine topical themes, to assess the future directional growth of the museum’s collections, and to develop and critique winning installation designs,” says Elaine D. Gustafson, director of exhibitions & collections and curator of contemporary art. The IMLS grant also provides the Tampa Museum of Art with the opportunity to develop different interpretative media – from label copy and interpretative tours to participatory activity stations – all of which allow the museum to explore how people experience art exhibitions.