Cultural institution receives largest gift in its history from area businessman

TAMPA — Former hedge fund manager Jeff Vinik has gone all-in on Tampa since relocating to the city and buying the Tampa Bay Lightning hockey team in 2010 and then embarking on the $3 billion Water Street Tampa development project. His support for the city continues with a $5 million gift, via the Vinik Family Foundation, to the Tampa Museum of Art.

According to a press release, it’s the largest single donation the museum has ever received. The gift will endow the position of executive director, whose official title will now be the Penny and Jeff Vinik Executive Director of the Tampa Museum of Art.

Vinik and his wife, Penny, are longtime patrons of the museum, the release states, and their foundation has loaned artwork to it. Penny Vinik is a former co-chair of the institution’s strategic planning committee, and she led the executive search committee that hired Michael Tomor, the museum’s current executive director.

“We are very proud of the Tampa Museum of Art as an institution and as a vital part of the city in which we live and work,” Jeff Vinik states in the release. “Our gift is a way to celebrate the museum’s upcoming centennial anniversary and support TMA directors as they continue to lead one of Tampa’s most acclaimed cultural institutions.”