More than 140 works by David Hockney are set to go on view at the Tampa Museum of Art, marking a major survey exhibition of the artist's career opening after his death in June at age 88. The show, titled David Hockney: Perspective Should Be Reversed, is set to open Thursday, September 24, and pulls together portraits, landscapes, and experimental prints spanning six decades of his output.
The Tampa Museum of Art and Jordan D. Schnitzer are presenting the exhibition, which draws on the Jordan D. Schnitzer Family Foundation's collection of more than 22,000 paintings, prints, and sculptures housed in a 50,000-square-foot facility in Portland, Oregon, according to Ocula. As Creative Loafing Tampa Bay reports, the show includes Hockney portraits, designs, landscapes, and other works created with tools ranging from iPads and iPhones to Xerox machines and Polaroids. The New York Times has described Hockney as an artist who restored the human form to art, per the same account.
A Career That Never Stopped Experimenting
Hockney, widely regarded as one of the most influential British artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, died on June 11, 2026. His commercial standing was cemented in November 2018, when his 1972 painting Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) sold at auction for $90.3 million, a record at the time for a living artist. Creative Loafing Tampa Bay identifies Perspective Should Be Reversed as the show's title work.
This isn't the exhibition's first stop. Before arriving in Tampa, the show ran at the Palm Springs Art Museum from November 2024 to March 2025 as part of that institution's Q+ Art initiative spotlighting LGBTQ+ artists, according to the Palm Springs Art Museum, with roughly 160 works from Schnitzer's collection on view there, per SeeGreatArt. The curatorial framing has consistently emphasized Hockney's career-long exploration of gay identity, that outlet notes. After closing in Tampa on February 28, 2027, the exhibition is scheduled to travel to The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, where it will run from May 6 to September 7, 2027, according to the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation.
Opening Night and Ways to Get Involved
Wednesday's opening night at the Tampa Museum of Art included a Curator's Chat led by Joanna Robotham, the museum's Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, according to the City of Tampa. Tickets for the exhibition range from $5 to $25, per Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. In December, the museum will host a Remix workshop letting attendees tour the exhibit and create greeting cards inspired by Hockney's work, the outlet reports.
A Museum Mid-Transformation
The Hockney survey lands at the Tampa Museum of Art during a period of major physical change. The museum's Centennial Expansion, a project funded at more than $100 million, was scheduled to break ground in early October 2025. It includes a four-story, 51,000-square-foot crystalline addition designed by Weiss/Manfredi and is expected to more than triple education and exhibition spaces.
The museum sits at 120 West Gasparilla Plaza. David Hockney: Perspective Should Be Reversed opens September 24 and runs through February 28, 2027.
