Picasso at USF

Reading Time: 3 minutes If you’ve ever had a tour of Tampa Campus Special Collections, then you have probably seen the mock-up of a Picasso sculpture that never came to be. Originally planned to be erected at USF in the 1970s by the sculptor Carl Nesjar, the sculpture was meant to be over 100 feet tall. Recently, additional material from the USF Archives has been digitized. These items provide another glimpse into the monumental sculpture that, if it had been erected, would have drastically changed the feel of USF’s Tampa campus from what we know it to be today.

USF Curiosities: A Pablo Picasso sculpture 10 stories tall?

Reading Time: 7 minutes In 1971, a small-scale model of a Pablo Picasso sculpture, “Bust of a Woman,” was donated to the University of South Florida. Fifty years later, it received new attention from researchers after it was spotted on a shelf in the Tampa Library in 2018. Afterwards, Special Collections staff dug into the sculpture’s history and the intriguing story behind the model resurfaced… (Continue Reading)