Mar 18 Wednesday
Sarasota Art Museum shines a spotlight on Art Deco as the artform celebrates its centennial anniversary. Art Deco: The Golden Age of Illustration showcases 100 rare posters from the Crouse Collection created by some of the world’s earliest master graphic designers during the 1920s and 1930s.
During the 1920s, a bold new artistic style roared to life: Art Deco. This exciting, dramatic, and glamorous new genre bid farewell to the soft, organic forms of Art Nouveau and soon took the world by storm. One of Art Deco’s most significant contributions was the art of printed graphics, giving birth to the disciplines of illustration and typography that permeate our world today.
Featuring subjects ranging from automobiles, airlines, and ocean liners to drinks and tobacco, the works represented in Art Deco: The Golden Age of Illustration celebrate modernity, dynamism, and luxury—the dreams and desires of the turbulent early twentieth century.
In addition to the iconic posters, Art Deco: The Golden Age of Illustration conjures the era’s design aesthetic with selected sculptural works and cocktail shakers from the Crouse Collection, and Art Deco furniture pieces on loan from the Wolfsonian Museum at Florida International University in Miami.
Art Deco: The Golden Age of Illustration is organized by Sarasota Art Museum of Ringling College of Art and Design and curated by Rangsook Yoon, senior curator at Sarasota Art Museum.
Image credit: Installation view of Art Deco: The Golden Age of Illustration at Sarasota Art Museum, Sarasota, Florida, 2025. Photo: Ryan Gamma.
Award-winning and internationally recognized artist Janet Echelman (American) is renowned for her soaring installations that merge ancient craft with cutting-edge technology. Using centuries-old fishing net knotting techniques, Echelman transforms humble materials into ethereal sculptures that visualize natural phenomena and the interconnectedness of humanity and the environment.Radical Softness offers a rare, intimate look at Echelman’s artistic evolution, tracing her journey from early explorations in drawing, painting, and textiles to the monumental, netted sculptures that have redefined public spaces around the world. This exhibition contextualizes the artist’s practice, revealing the narratives, influences, and processes that drive her work. At its core, the exhibition highlights Echelman’s use of softness as a powerful tool—not only in material but as a philosophy. Showcasing a selection of works from across all four decades of the artist’s path-breaking career, along with a series of never-before-seen cyanotypes, Radical Softness reveals how an artist’s work can bring people together and carve out space for reflection in an ever-changing world.Founded in New York City and based in Boston, Studio Echelman’s impact is global. A recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, Harvard Loeb Fellowship, Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award, Aspen Institute Henry Crown Fellowship, and Fulbright Lectureship, her monumental sculptures span five continents. Recent commissions include Remembering the Future at the MIT Museum (2025), Butterfly Rest Stop in Frisco, Texas (2024), Current in Columbus, Ohio (2023), Bending Arc at the St. Pete Pier in Florida (2020), Earthtime Korea (2020), Impatient Optimist at The Gates Foundation in Seattle (2015), and 1.8 Renwick at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (2015), among others.Janet Echelman: Radical Softness is organized by Sarasota Art Museum of Ringling College of Art and Design and curated by Lacie Barbour, associate curator of exhibitions at Sarasota Art Museum.
Image: Janet Echelman (American). Study (Butterfly Rest Stop 1/9 scale), Rome, Italy, 2022. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Giovanni DeAngelis.
Mar 19 Thursday
Go nose to nose with Big John, the World’s Largest Triceratops, in an immersive and playful dinosaur exhibit at the Glazer Children’s Museum in Downtown Tampa. Whether you have a child at home or not, all are welcome to visit this colossal exhibit, 66 million years in the making.
New works by Selina Román blend photography, abstraction, and self-portraiture to explore themes of beauty and the politics of size in Selina Román: Abstract Corpulence. Roman’s photographs feature tightly cropped images of the artist’s own body, boldly occupying the full composition and extending past the boundaries of each frame. Pastel bodysuits and tights transform the artist’s flesh into new, gently rolling landscapes as amorphous shapes converge to create modernist-inspired compositions. At this scale, Roman’s tightly cropped portrayals of stomachs, thighs, and hips become formal studies of line, shape and color, asking viewers to consider the human form from a point of true abstraction. The softly hued palette created by the artist’s bodysuits lends itself to narratives around the aesthetics of femininity. Displayed as a colorful never-before-seen installation, Roman’s photographs transform the gallery into a space of quiet resistance, subverting traditional ideas of feminine beauty.
Selina Román: Abstract Corpulence is organized by Sarasota Art Museum of Ringling College of Art and Design and curated by Rangsook Yoon, senior curator at Sarasota Art Museum.
Image credit: Selina Román (American, 1978). Blockhead 1, 2025. Dye sublimation on aluminum, 40 x 50 in. Courtesy of the artist.
Mar 20 Friday