Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art

The Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art (LRMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located on the campus of St. Petersburg College in Tarpon Springs, Florida. The museum houses a permanent collection which includes paintings by Abraham Rattner and contemporary Florida sculpture including modern art by Abraham Rattner, Esther Gentle, and Allen Leepa, as well as by Rattner's contemporaries, Pablo Picasso, Henry Moore, Marc Chagall, Auguste Herbin, Georges Rouault, Hans Hofmann, and Max Ernst. History The Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art was the result of a gift of art belonging to Allen Leepa (1919–2009) to the St. Petersburg College (then a two-year community college ) in 1996. Leepa, a professor of art at Michigan State University from 1945 to 1983 and an abstract expressionist artist in his own right, was the stepson of Abraham Rattner (1893–1978) – a highly regarded 20th-century modern artist who was a friend and contemporary of Pablo Picasso and other early modernists in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s – and the son of Esther Gentle. Collection The museum's 20th-century collection is made up of art from the estate of Abraham Rattner, donated by Allen and Isabelle Leepa, along with a collection of over 2,000 words of art by Rattner, Leepa, and Gentle which the Leepas had previously donated to the Tampa Museum of Art in 1997 and which the Tampa museum donated to the Leepa-Rattner Museum before the latter's opening. Rattner's retrospective works account for over 60% of the collection, including lithographs, tapestries, sculptures, clay works, paintings, and stained glass. Works by Pablo Picasso, Henry Moore, Marc Chagall, Max Ernst. Architecture The museum was designed by Tampa architect Edward C. Hoffman Jr. and built by Creative Contractors, Inc. The interior of the museum resembles the bow of a ship, created by the effect of large skylights that sweep towards the rafters of the building. This image pays tribute to Tarpon Springs' fishing and sponge harvesting industries. The 53,000 square feet (4,900 m 2 ) complex consists of three buildings in one – the museum, the Ellis Foundation Art Education Center, and the Michael M. Bennett Library – designed in such a way that the buildings.