Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art

Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art

Location of LRMA in Tarpon Springs
Established	22 January 2002
Location	600 Klosterman Road Tarpon Springs Florida 34689 United States
Coordinates	28°07′18″N 82°44′47″W / 28.12173°N 82.74651°W / 28.12173; -82.74651
Type	Modern and Contemporary Art
Director	Ann Larsen
Website	www.leeparattner.com

The Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art is a modern and contemporary art museum located on the campus of St. Petersburg College in Tarpon Springs, Florida. The museum houses a permanent collection which includes paintings by Abraham Rattner and contemporary Florida sculpture including modern art by Abraham Rattner, Esther Gentle, and Allen Leepa, as well as by Rattner's contemporaries, Pablo Picasso, Henry Moore, Marc Chagall, Auguste Herbin, Georges Rouault, Hans Hofmann, and Max Ernst.

The Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art was the result of a gift of art belonging to Allen Leepa (1919–2009) to the St. Petersburg College (then a two-year community college) in 1996. Leepa, a professor of art at Michigan State University from 1945 to 1983 and an abstract expressionist artist in his own right, was the stepson of Abraham Rattner (1893–1978) – a highly regarded 20th-century modern artist who was a friend and contemporary of Pablo Picasso and other early modernists in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s – and the son of Esther Gentle (1899–1991), a sculptor, painter and printmaker. After his mother's death, Leepa inherited his stepfather's estate, which included works by Rattner and his contemporaries.

R. Lynn Whitelaw served as the museum's first director. He was succeeded by Victoria Cooke in 2011 and Ann Larsen in 2013.

The museum's 20th-century collection is made up of art from the estate of Abraham Rattner, donated by Allen and Isabelle Leepa, along with a collection of over 2,000 words of art by Rattner, Leepa, and Gentle which the Leepas had previously donated to the Tampa Museum of Art in 1997 and which the Tampa museum donated to the Leepa-Rattner Museum before the latter's opening. Rattner's retrospective works account for over 60% of the collection, including lithographs, tapestries, sculptures, clay works, paintings and stained glass. Works by Pablo Picasso, Henry Moore, Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, and others are kept in storage and exhibited from time to time.