New Museum for Arts & Crafts

February 18, 2014

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While several museums hold extensive collections of the work of such luminaries of the movement as Green & Green and the Stickley brothers, there isn't a museum dedicated solely to American Arts & Crafts. That's about to change.

A joint project of collector Rudy Ciccarello and the Two Red Roses Foundation, the new Museum of the American Arts & Crafts Movement is expected to open in 2017. Not far from the historic Kenwood neighborhood, the 90,000-square-foot museum is to be built by Alfonso Architects at 333 Third Ave. North in St. Petersburg, Florida.

The four-story structure will include exhibition galleries displaying hundreds of objects from Rudy Ciccarello's fine-and decorative-arts collections, as well as additional space for special exhibitions and events. Also planned are a small auditorium, library, restaurant and cafe, gift shop, and bookstore.

Endowed to the Two Red Roses Foundation, the Ciccarello collection contains more than 1,300 items, including furniture, pottery, tile, metalwork, lighting, textiles, stained glass, and fine art. Highights include seldom-seen works by Gustav Stickley and Stickley Brothers, Charles Rohlfs, the artists of Byrdcliffe, Dirk van Erp, Roycroft, William Grueby, the Saturday Evening Girls, Newcomb College, Arthur Wesley Dow, and others. In late 2013, the Foundation acquired an extraordinary collection of photogravures and prints, including many period-related Pictorialist and Photo-Secessionist works and a stunning portrait of sculptor Auguste Rodin by Edward Steichen.

Originally printed in the Spring 2014 issue of "Arts & Crafts Homes and the Revival."