Sneak Peek at a New World Class Museum Opening Soon

     The Tampa Bay/St. Petersburg area of Florida is blessed to have some really spectacular museums like The Dali, the James Museum of Western Art, The Florida Holocaust Museum, the Ringling Museum of Art, and the Museum of the American Arts and Crafts Movement, just to name a few. Within a year, hopefully their ranks will be joined by MAPS - the Museum of Archaeology, Paleontology, and Science.

    The Museum's exhibits are currently housed in a very cramped building on a Pasco County Schools campus in New Port Richey, but a new and larger location is in the works. Right now, probably 90 % or more of the museum's collections are in storage, but staff and volunteers have staged a few exhibits and opened up for Sunday afternoon docent-led tours so that visitors can get a small taste of what's to come.

    Much of the museum's holdings have come from a couple of older museums that have closed, and they represent every area of the world. The Central and South American Pre-Columbian collection is one of the largest in the world, and, in and of itself, would make for a spectacular Pre-Columbian Museum. But wait there's more! There are large Native American, African and Asian collections as well. Ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt are also featured. Paleontological specimens come from around the world, but there is a large collection of fossils representing Florida's prehistoric flora and fauna, and an exhibit representing underwater archaeology including artifacts from Spanish shipwrecks off Florida's coast.

    The Museum also has working relationships with many other museums and archaeological and paleontological digs around the world. 

    The Executive Director of the Museum, Charles Zidar, led our tour, and his enthusiasm and expertise were phenomenal. I have no doubt that history and museum lovers in the area will be wowed very soon.

For more info, here's the website: https://www.mapsmuseum.org/ And a few pictures. Remember, only a very small part of their collection is out of storage. There's much more to come once the museum is in its own larger space.