Margaret Murray has played a leading role in more than a half-dozen arts organizations in Tampa Bay and beyond. When the position opened to head Creative Pinellas, she was a natural fit to lead the county organization that supports and connects artists with the community.
Over the past 25-plus years, she’s been a dynamic player at the Museum of Fine Arts, St Petersburg (MFA); the Morean Arts Center, freeFall Theatre, Madstone Theaters, and One in Ten (in Washington, D.C.). She was the executive director of Tampa’s Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, founded Movies that Move, and created community engagement projects such as the Tour De Shine and Kerouac in Paradise bicycle tours.
Behind the resume is a lively imagination, strong business acumen, and a sharp wit. Who else might think to pair the performance of a neuroscientist jazz pianist with a mathematician father-and-son duo of origami artists and somehow make it a sellout show? As director of MFA’s public programs, Murray conceived of the event to highlight the museum’s origami sculpture exhibition. The men performed together at the MFA with the father-and-son duo creating live origami pieces while John C. O’Leary played the piano. “It was amazing,” Murray says. “As they lectured on mathematical theory, they placed origami pieces on the piano keys, manipulating the sounds to create this beautifully lyrical piece.”
Brick by Brick
Like most other successful leaders, Murray advanced through multiple jobs and connections. She grew up in Pinellas County and received degrees from the University of South Florida and St. Petersburg College. She was working at a local Barnes & Noble in the early ‘90s when she got the chance to move to New York through a job transfer to B. Dalton Bookseller. She also worked as a music buyer for Kim’s Video, an underground video and record store in the West Village with a film collection that attracted celebrity actors and filmmakers. Later, she became sales manager for the record label of the Knitting Factory, an iconic New York music venue.
Eventually, she moved to Amsterdam to become the Knitting Factory’s label manager. She worked with distribution and booked events, many of which were financed by European governments and attached to film festivals. “It gave me a different perspective on the arts and on how they were funded and treated throughout the world,” she says.
Wizard of St. Pete
In the late 1990s, Murray moved back to St. Petersburg to be closer to family. She worked for WMNF-FM radio, leading its fundraising campaign for a new building. She brought film to downtown St. Pete when there were few reasons to go after dark. Utilizing connections with filmmakers she met while at the Knitting Factory, she founded Movies that Move, a pop-up theater that projected films onto the side of buildings. One memorable event aired “The Wizard of Oz” to the soundtrack of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon,” transmitted via car radios. An old building in the Warehouse Arts District has never been as colorful as when Munchkinland was projected onto it to the tune of “Money.”
Florida Woman
Although Pinellas County isn’t quite Kansas, Murray’s upbringing in the 1970s had its own farm-girl vibe. She rode a pony around Gulfport and kept it tied up in a vacant lot near her family’s home. She laughs remembering an occasion when the pony escaped. Gulfport police called her mom, who then was a local bartender. “How do you know it’s my pony?” her mother asked. The police response: “Because you’re the only one in town who has one.”
Eventually her parents moved to Pinellas Park so that Murray could have not one, but two horses. Today, she has an incorrigible young Australian cattle dog mix and pines for another equine.
Future Plans
As Murray settles in to her new position at Creative Pinellas, she is percolating ideas to connect the seemingly disparate organizations – Creative Pinellas, Heritage Village, and the Florida Botanical Gardens – that share the county’s Pinewood location in Largo. “I’m really excited about finding ways that we can take the contemporary art that Creative Pinellas showcases, the natural flora and fauna of the botanical gardens, and the Florida history of Heritage Village and bring those together into one big experience,” she says. As a hint of what that might involve, she says she considers the local environment to be Pinellas’ best art canvas. “Not every arts scene has that. It is so beautiful here,” she says. “I’m excited about exploring how can we bring the outdoors in and indoors out and help build awareness of the environment here.”
