Museum Officials, Business Partners, Even Florida Governor Charlie Crist Is Pulling Out All The Stops For Black Art Exhibit

The Sunshine State has spared no effort to promote The Kinsey Collection, what many are claiming will be the most remarkable art and historic exhibit yet in tracing the African-American experience for Tallahassee residents. People are already feeling the impact.

Florida A&M University grads Bernard and Shirley Kinsey still consider Tallahassee a second home, and for six months "The Kinsey Collection: Shared Treasures of Bernard and Shirley Kinsey" will have residence at the Mary Brogan Museum of Art & Science. The exhibit officially opens to the public Friday and will remain here until March 21, 2010.

"I will tell you that we are projecting stronger admissions for the Brogan Museum than ever before," said Chucha Barber, the Brogan's CEO. "We have generated significant sponsorship for this exhibit, even more so than we had for the blockbuster Our Body — The Universe Within."

The list of corporate partners is a business Who's Who: Visit Florida, The Walt Disney Co., Target Stores, Progress Energy, State Farm, Edison Electric, the Anheuser Busch Foundation and AT&T, among others.

Local partner A.M.W.A.T. Moving & Storage volunteered to truck the exhibit here from Los Angeles and will take it to Washington, D.C., for its next venue, the Smithsonian Institution.

Barber said the biggest outreach is a cooperative effort with tourism marketer Visit Florida and American Express, which will promote the exhibit to more than 7.4 million people through the company's communications with its cardholders.

In Florida, the Governor's Office will join in marketing the exhibit with emphasis on February, Black History Month, she said.

Besides Los Angeles, the Kinsey Collection has been on display in Cincinnati, Chicago and in Bernard Kinsey's hometown of West Palm Beach, where it was housed at the Norton Museum of Art.

"We have had about 200,000 people see the collection, 12 to 15 million people have seen it on television, and about 2-plus million will see it at the Smithsonian," Bernard Kinsey said. "But what we're trying to do is a little different."

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