The Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) was founded by art collector and
philanthropist Margaret Acheson Stuart (1896–1980). The Margaret Acheson Stuart Society, the museum's independent support organization, is named in her honor. The city provided the four-acre waterfront site for the construction of the original building and The Junior League of
St. Petersburg offered resources for The Great Hall. The building was designed by John Volk of
Palm Beach, with a curving colonnade on Beach Drive. Volk stated that "a museum should give a feeling of permanence and that is what I have tried to do with this building." Chartered by the
State of Florida in 1961, the MFA opened its Beach Drive doors to the public in 1965; the first art museum in St. Petersburg. The size of the museum was more than doubled in 2008, when the 33,000 square-foot Hazel Hough wing on the north side of the building was completed. The expansion included a new café, an enlarged library and a bigger museum shop, all since removed. The museum's holdings span over 5,000 years of human history and features significant works of art by artists such as Claude Monet, Georgia O'Keeffe and Kehinde Wiley to name a few. == Recent Collections & Exhibits ==