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Recent Museum Press


Alive Tampa Bay logo
Rico Gatson: Visible Time on Alive Tampa Bay

5/6/2023 - ‘Rico Gatson: Visible Time’ Exhibit Opens in June at The USF Contemporary Art Museum - Alive Tampa Bay
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Poor People's Art on Creative Pinellas

2/21/2023 - The Rich History of Poor People’s Art - By Tony Palms, Creative Pinellas
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The Oracle logo
Poor People's Art in The Oracle

1/17/2023 - Contemporary Art Museum’s new exhibit shares generational stories of poverty - By Julia Saad, The Oracle
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Forbes logo
Poor People's Art on Forbes

1/8/2023 - Martin Luther King Jr.’s Overlooked Crusade And ‘Poor People’s Art’ - By Chadd Scott, Forbes
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Poor People's Art in The Weekly Challenger

1/5/2023 - ‘Poor People’s Art’ exhibition coming to USF - The Weekly Challenger
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83degrees logo
Poor People's Art in 83degrees

1/3/2023 - January Arts Roundup: Tempus Projects, USF CAM exhibits and much more start the new year - By Michele Smith, 83degrees
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Creative Pinellas logo
Breaking Barriers on Creative Pinellas

12/9/2022 - Veterans Sharing Their Voices Through Art - By Sheila Cowley, Creative Pinellas
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About USF Contemporary Art Museum

The USF Contemporary Art Museum opened its current facility in 1989, adjacent to the USF College of The Arts. The museum has presented numerous significant and investigative exhibitions of contemporary art from Florida, the United States and around the world, including Africa, Europe, and Latin America. Changing exhibitions are designed to introduce students, faculty and the community to current cultural trends. Exhibitions to date have included the work of Vito Acconci, Atelier van Lieshout (AVL ), Frances Barth, Bili Bidjocka, Jim Campbell, James Casebere, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Emily Cheng, Keith Edmier, Zhang Hongtu, Alfredo Jaar, Los Carpinteros, Allan McCollum, Lucy Orta, Pepón Osorio, James Rosenquist, and Ed Ruscha among numerous others.

USFCAM maintains the university’s art collection, comprised of more than 5,000 art works. There are exceptional holdings in graphics and sculpture multiples by internationally acclaimed artists, such as Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg and James Rosenquist, who have worked at USF’s Graphicstudio. Contemporary photography and African art are also important areas of the collection.

The USF Institute for Research in Art is recognized by the State of Florida as a major cultural institution and receives funding through the Florida Department of State, the Florida Arts Council and the Division of Cultural Affairs, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Arts Council of Hillsborough County and the Hillsborough County Board of County Commissioners, as well as numerous private foundations on a project basis. The Contemporary Art Museum is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums.


Janaina Tschäpe, Blood, Sea video installation. From the 2014 CAM@25 exhibition. photo: Will Lytch

Our Mission

The primary mission of the USF Contemporary Art Museum is to bring to the University and the Tampa Bay community vital, investigative and scholarly contemporary exhibitions, while simultaneously contributing to the dialogue within the international arts community by organizing exhibitions, producing relevant catalogues, scheduling critically significant traveling exhibitions and by underwriting experimental projects of artists emerging on the national and the international fronts.

Parallel to this purpose is an ongoing commitment to provide the educational underpinnings necessary for the assimilation of issues at the core of contemporary art for an audience that includes community and corporate members, students, faculty, staff, administrators, scholars, critics, historians and artists.

The Museum's educational philosophy, consistent with the approach to exhibitions, is to contribute to the ongoing research of leading artists, critics, and historians by organizing symposia, conferences and lectures to discuss and analyze current issues in art and society. The museum is a laboratory for scholars, museum professionals, students, interns and artists. The USF Contemporary Art Museum collects and maintains a collection of contemporary art and makes it available as a visual library for students, and as an enrichment to a broad and varied constituency through loans and direct access. Museum Memberships, both Private and Corporate help subsidize the museum's operating and exhibition costs.

University of South Florida

The University of South Florida, established in 1956 and located in Tampa, is a high-impact, global research university dedicated to student success. The USF System includes three, separately accredited institutions: USF; USF St. Petersburg; and USF Sarasota-Manatee. Serving more than 49,000 students, the USF System has an annual budget of $1.6 billion and an annual economic impact of $4.4 billion. USF is ranked in the Top 30 nationally for research expenditures among public universities, according to the National Science Foundation. In 2016, the Florida Legislature designated USF as “Emerging Preeminent,” placing USF in an elite category among the state’s 12 public universities. USF is a member of the American Athletic Conference.