At this month’s ‘Art Unbound,’ MFA St. Pete unveils a major reimagination of its permanent collection [w/photos]

Jennifer McKellar, MFA St. Pete’s Manager of Collections Exhibitions, in St. Petersburg, Florida on Oct. 27, 2026. Credit: Dave Decker/Creative Loafing Tampa Bay Anyone that’s ever decided to move some art around in their home, knows it can be a daunting project—hang this here, or maybe over there, but that won’t work with that, etc etc. Now imagine you don’t just have a few art objects to choose from and rearrange, but more than 20,000. That’s the task that the Museum of Fine Arts has taken upon itself. When “Art Unbound,” the re-installation of its permanent collection, opens to the public on Nov. 21, visitors will discover the reason behind this massive change—it’s giving us a whole new way of seeing. The MFA’s encyclopedic holdings range from objects thousands of years old to artworks of the present moment. Up till now, as in most museums of its kind, the works have been presented in more or less linear fashion, beginning with antiquity and moving on from there, era b