Museum of the American Arts and Crafts Movement

Museum of the American Arts and Crafts Movement

The entrance of MAACM
Location	St. Petersburg, Florida, U.S.
Coordinates	27°46′34″N 82°38′19″W / 27.776036°N 82.638488°W / 27.776036; -82.638488
Founder	Rudy Ciccarello[1]
Owner	Two Red Roses Foundation[2]
Website	www.museumaacm.org

Museum of the American Arts and Crafts Movement (MAACM) is a 137,000 sq ft (12,700 m²) museum which opened in 2021 in St. Petersburg, Florida.^[3] The museum is funded by The Two Red Roses Foundation,^[4] which in turn was endowed by art collector, businessman and philanthropist Rodolfo (Rudy) Ciccarello. The Museum displays the Foundation's collection of fine and decorative arts of the Arts and Crafts Movement period. Construction began in 2015.^[5] Designed by Alfonso Architects, the museum is five stories and features a grand atrium, skylights, a spiral staircase, more than 40,000 square feet of gallery space, a children’s gallery, a reference library, a theater, a graphic studio, and a green space.^[6][7] The building is reported to have cost at least $90 million.^[8]

The Foundation's collection was developed by Rudy Ciccarello. Ciccarello first intended to build the museum in cooperation with the city of Tampa on a site across from the Tampa Museum of Art at the edge of Curtis Hixon Park.^[9] That deal fell apart in 2012 when Ciccarello and the city were unable to agree on financial terms, and Ciccarello decided to construct the museum without government assistance.^[9] Dewey Blanton of the American Alliance of Museums remarked on the rarity of museums on this scale being built in the United States "these days",^[9] while the museum was featured in a New York Times article about the trend in museums built by wealthy people to house their personal collections.^[10]

Ciccarello, who founded a successful pharmaceutical distribution business, says that he first became interested in the Arts and Crafts movement when he saw a cabinetmaker crafting a bookcase copied from one designed by Gustav Stickley, and decided to buy the original.^[9] He has been collecting since the early 1990s, purchasing "pottery, metalwork, lighting, tile, built-ins such as fireplaces, even entire rooms, tiled walls and all," in addition to the furniture that first caught his eye.^[9] More recently, he began to collect photographers of the early 20th century Pictorialist movement, and the Photo-Secession movement, including Alfred Stieglitz.^[9]

Kevin W. Tucker, the former Margot B. Perot Senior Curator of Decorative Arts and Design with the Dallas Museum of Art was appointed the inaugural Director of the MAACM in August 2015.^[11] Ciccarello dissolved the Director position in December 2015.^{[citation needed]}

The collection includes work by Gustav Stickley, Charles Rohlfs, Frank Lloyd Wright, the artists of Byrdcliffe Colony, Greene and Greene, Dirk van Erp, Roycroft, William Grueby, Newcomb Pottery, and Arthur Wesley Dow.^[5]

Kent Lydecker, director of the Museum of Fine Arts (St. Petersburg, Florida), described the Ciccarello collection as "one of the most important collections of American Arts and Crafts, in all media, in private hands."^[9]

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