Florida International Museum (FIM) has become Florida’s premier cultural attraction, having ttracted over 2.3 million visitors from all 50 states and over 100 countries since it opened in 1995. The museum was organized in 1992 for the purpose of creating a major international cultural center within a 270,000 square foot former department store building, which has undergone a multi-million dollar renovation.

The museum is a not-for-profit organization, dedicated to providing educational, cultural and historical exhibitions. To date, over 700,000 school children have toured the museum. In 2000, the museum opened year-round for the first time with a permanent Kennedy collection of artifacts from the late President John F. Kennedy, his family and others surrounding the Kennedy clan. Prior to this, the museum operated only five or six months of the year and underwent tremendous renovations for each exhibition.

Also in 2000, the museum became an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution and has since housed artifacts from the Smithsonian and other museums on a rotating basis. The museum marked its new status with the loan of two portraits from the National Gallery. The portrait of John F. Kennedy has never been on exhibit anywhere other than the National Portrait Gallery’s Hall of Presidents.

The Kennedy Galleries, which closed in 2003 to make room for new exhibitions, included over 500 items of a personal nature relating to the Kennedy family and include a recreation of the West Wing of the White House and a Jackie Kennedy gallery. Much of the collection came from the estate of Evelyn Lincoln, personal secretary to the former President for twelve years.

In December of 2000, the museum unveiled its second permanent installation, The Cuban Missile Crisis. This exhibition focuses on the tense events of October 1962, and starts visitors off with a look at the culture of the early 1960s through film, design, music and more. Audio and video are used throughout the presentation, which includes period living rooms and kitchen, a school room from 1962, a full size fallout shelter and a Soviet-built SA-2 Missile, plus artwork from modern Cuba.

In 2001, the FIM Board agreed to create a museum of multi-experiences, through diverse rotating national and international exhibitions. Since that time, rotating exhibit partners have included: The Norman Rockwell Museum at Stockbridge, MA, The National Portrait Gallery, The Mary Brogan Museum of Art & Science in Tallahassee, FL, The Smithsonian Institution, Museum of the City of New York, and many others.

In Fall and Winter 2003, FIM will unveil two large-scale traveling exhibitions. Russian Odyssey: Riches Of The State Russian Museum, featuring more than 300 superlative objects which span 800 years of Russian history, will be on display from November 2, 2003 to April 4, 2004. Baseball As America, a traveling exhibition organized by The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum opens December 13, 2003 and continues through March 6, 2004.
The national sponsor of Baseball As America is Ernst & Young.

Prior blockbuster exhibitions presented by the museum include the inaugural exhibition Treasures of the Czars, plus Splendors of Ancient Egypt, Alexander the Great, Titanic: The Exhibition, Empires of Mystery and John F. Kennedy: The Exhibition. Titanic alone drew over 800,000 visitors, making it one of the country’s top exhibitions in recent times.

The museum is a founding partner of The Looper, a private-public partnership transportation project that links all seven downtown museums together on a thirty-minute schedule seven days a week. It has an extensive education program and educational guides for most major exhibitions. Museum Store helps support the museum’s mission of providing an educational and cultural experience to visitors. Additionally, the museum has a presence on the Internet at www.floridamuseum.org.

###

The Florida International Museum is sponsored in part by the Florida Arts Council, State of Florida, Division of Cultural Affairs, St. Petersburg/Clearwater Area Convention and Visitors Bureau and the City of St. Petersburg. Other major sponsors include , Progress Energy, Renaissance Vinoy Resort & Golf Club and St. Petersburg Times.