The museum across Palmetto Street from the Lakeland Public Library opens its largest new show of the season this Saturday, Nov. 14. LIFE: Six Women Photographers moves into the Harper Family and Dorothy Jenkins galleries and stays until March 7, 2027. Even after it opens, the shows already hanging take up most of the building. Five of those exhibitions end between Jan. 3 and Feb. 28. That includes the Warhol gallery, which has been up since the expanded building opened.
So the next 15 weeks are the fullest the building will be all year. Admission is free and so is parking. Anyone living a few blocks from Lake Morton can treat it as a place to stop in for 40 minutes on a Thursday and come back again, with no need to plan a big day around it.
Same Building, New Name, More Walls
Plenty of people around the lake still call it the Polk Museum of Art. On July 13, 2024, it became the Ashley Gibson Barnett Museum of Art at Florida Southern College, known as The AGB. Florida Southern College announced that the new name came with an endowment from the Nicholas and Ashley Barnett Foundation at GiveWell. The gift supports operations, exhibitions, education and long-term stability. The Ledger reported that museum leaders had wanted a naming gift for a long time, and that the donors did not make the name change a condition. LkldNow noted that Barnett is a Florida Southern alumna and a trustee of both the college and the museum.
The bigger physical change came six months later. A 14,000-square-foot expansion added seven galleries, educational spaces and a creativity lab, and the original building was renovated. It opened to the public on Jan. 18, 2025. That date matters this winter. Several shows opened with the expansion and were given unusually long runs, and those runs are now ending.
What Opens Saturday
LIFE: Six Women Photographers brings together more than 70 images by Margaret Bourke-White, Marie Hansen, Martha Holmes, Lisa Larsen, Nina Leen and Hansel Mieth. All six worked for LIFE magazine between the late 1930s and the early 1970s, and the museum credits them with helping create modern photojournalism. One of the featured prints is Hansen's 1942 gelatin silver photograph of WACs doing daily calisthenics. The show was organized by The New York Historical.
On Friday, Nov. 13, the opening reception from 6 to 8 p.m. is for members. Earlier that day, from noon to 2 p.m., the museum has a Gallery Perspectives session and an artist-in-residence live painting. Everyone else gets the galleries starting Saturday at 10 a.m.
The Closing Dates Bunch Up After New Year's
LIFE runs into March. Most of what hangs around it does not. Here is the order in which the current shows end:
- Learning to Be Me, artwork by Polk County students in kindergarten through second grade, closes Nov. 29.
- The Sheriff Shoots: Photographs by Grady Judd, in the Robert and Malena Puterbaugh Photography Gallery, closes Jan. 3, 2027.
- Warhol Condensed: From Marilyn to Soup And Back Again and This Just In! New Works From the Permanent Collection, both in the R. Bruce and Melissa Rich Gallery, close Feb. 21, 2027. Both have been up since Jan. 18, 2025.
- Lasting Impressions: Works on Paper from the Permanent Collection (1859–2010), in the Perkins Gallery, and Balancing Dualities: The Sculpture of Li Hongwei, in the Lynda and Steve Buck Gallery of Fine Art and the Ting Tsung and Wei Fong Chao Foundation Gallery, both close Feb. 28, 2027.
The Warhol gallery has the longest run in that list, at a little over two years. The museum's description builds it around Warhol's habit of turning commercial images, consumer products and celebrities into art, from Marilyn Monroe to the Tomato Campbell's Soup can. Li Hongwei's show is much newer and leaves on nearly the same schedule. The Chinese sculptor and ceramicist sets porcelain against stainless steel to play fragility off strength and tradition off modernity.
Two permanent-collection shows will still be up after spring. When Old is New: American Art Reconsidered runs through Dec. 31, 2027 and pairs the AGB's own works with loans from the Ulrich Museum of Art. Surface, Service, And Splendor: Decorating History in Clay runs through the same date in the Dr. Alan and Linda Rich Gallery. Both will still be there in the summer. Most of the rest of the building will look different by March.
Thursday Is the Long Night, and the Holidays Take Three of Them
Regular hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, and 1 to 5 p.m. on Sunday. The museum is closed Mondays. Thursday is the exception, with doors open until 8 p.m. For anyone who works a regular day schedule, that late Thursday is the easiest way to see the place without crowding a weekend.
The holiday calendar makes those evenings scarcer than they look. Thanksgiving is Thursday, Nov. 26, and the museum is closed. Christmas Eve also lands on a Thursday, and the museum closes early that day. New Year's Eve, Thursday, Dec. 31, is a full closure. Counting tonight, Nov. 12, that leaves five full Thursday evenings before the new year, and the museum has scheduled something on four of them:
| Date | What's on | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Thu., Nov. 19 | Lakeland Symphony Orchestra gallery series | 6 to 7:45 p.m., tickets through the orchestra, galleries open to the public |
| Thu., Dec. 3 | AGB Thursdays | Late gallery hours |
| Thu., Dec. 10 | AGBeats: Music at The Museum | Live jazz, 6 to 7:45 p.m. |
| Thu., Dec. 17 | Date Night | 6:15 to 8 p.m., galleries open, bar on site |
Dec. 3 is also the night of the 45th Lakeland Christmas Parade. It starts at 7 p.m. at the RP Funding Center, comes down Lemon Street into downtown, and fireworks over Lake Mirror open the evening. Downtown streets will be busy that night, so the museum is a closer, quieter Thursday on the 10th or the 17th.
Daytime Options That Cost Nothing Extra
If weekends work better, the calendar has a few anchors. Docent-led tours run Saturday, Dec. 5 and Saturday, Dec. 19, each from 1 to 2 p.m. Gallery Perspectives comes back Friday, Dec. 11, from noon to 1 p.m. as part of its second-Friday monthly schedule.
Museum Store Sunday is Nov. 29, from 1 to 5 p.m. The Shop at the AGB carries gifts, handcrafted pieces and local goods that day, at 30% off for members and 15% off for everyone else. It is also the last day of Learning to Be Me. If a young artist in your house has work in the kindergarten-through-second-grade show, that Sunday afternoon covers both the art and the holiday shopping.
The Student Walls Change Three Times
The Polk County student exhibitions follow their own schedule, one grade band at a time. Learning to Be Me, for K through 2, ends Nov. 29. Art Out Loud, for grades 6 through 8, opens Dec. 5 and runs to Jan. 10. Transcendence, for grades 9 through 12, follows from Jan. 16 to Feb. 14. The Art Out Loud reception is Saturday, Dec. 12, from 11 a.m. to noon, for friends and family of the student artists.
So one gallery in the building changes over every five or six weeks this winter, while the bigger shows around it come down together in late February. Someone who stops in on Dec. 5 and again on Jan. 16 will see a different student show each time, plus LIFE, the Warhol and the Li Hongwei sculptures still up.
Pairing It With Downtown's Holiday Weekends
Munn Park is a short walk north. The Munn Park Holiday Craft Bazaar runs Saturday, Nov. 28, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., with more than 45 local makers and Santa photos from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Shopping is free. First Friday: Holiday Spectacular fills downtown on Dec. 4 from 6 to 9 p.m. with Santa photos, vendors, entertainment and Munn Park's 40-foot Christmas tree. It is free to attend. The next day, Dec. 5, the docent tour runs at 1 p.m. and Art Out Loud opens. That evening, Snowfest runs from 5 to 9 p.m. at Frances Langford Promenade, 121 S. Lake Ave. That makes the first weekend of December the busiest stretch of the season around Lake Morton, with something going on from the museum's galleries up to the promenade.
The AGB is a short walk from most of Lake Morton, and from now through February it has nearly every gallery full. If you'd like to talk about life around Lake Morton, or you're curious what a home a few blocks from the museum and library is worth today, Brian Stephens and the Rhoads Stephens team are glad to help. Start with your Instant Home Valuation.
