Pirates get January; artists get March. The Gasparilla Festival of the Arts — one of America’s top-ranked outdoor juried art festivals — fills Curtis Hixon Park and the Riverwalk each spring with roughly 350 artists and some 30,000 art lovers under the downtown skyline.
Painters, sculptors, jewelers and photographers from across the country show work at every price point, with prize money that draws serious talent and a collectors’ preview that opens the weekend. Emerging artists get their own showcase, local food and music stages keep the festival humming, and the Tampa Museum of Art next door makes it a full art immersion.
Admission is free; the art is the real deal; the setting — river, minarets, skyline — is pure Tampa.
The festival proves the city’s arts season doesn’t end with Gasparilla’s beads. It crests there.
