Jeff Whipple’s fifty-year retrospective is a survey of his art from 1975 when he was eighteen to art he’s created at age 68 in 2025. The exhibition at the Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art was curated by Sara Felice. There are 88 artworks in the show in drawing, printmaking, sculpture, video, and painting in oils, watercolor and acrylic. Ms. Felice worked on the exhibition over twelve months prior to the opening in August, 2025. She looked at thousand’s of Whipple’s artworks, mostly stored in his 10,000 square-foot studio, and in public and private collections to select the pieces for the show. The exhibition was presented chronologically using his most significant artworks through the decades.

Whipple began his career with realistically rendered metaphorical images that evoked creative interpretations. While the styles changed, the thoughtful, sometimes mysterious, sometimes humorous content has remained a constant through his career.

The retrospective will travel to the Spartanburg Art Museum in Spartanburg, South Carolina for exhibition from April to July 2026.

The show is fully curated and ready to exhibit. It can be adjusted for smaller or larger venues without altering the through-line of the retrospective.

No rental fee. The current exhibition artwork was transported in a 20-foot rental truck.

The link below is a 60 page PDF with photographs of the Leepa-Rattner Museum installation. The PDF is 40 megabytes and should open or download from the link. (NOTE: You can scroll the PDF on your phone but there are many QR codes from the exhibition tags that link to audio clips by Jeff Whipple about some of the art. You'd need to look at the PDF off your phone or use a different phone to scan the QRs.)

For questions about the exhibition, Jeff Whipple’s contact info is at the bottom of this page.

Jeff Whipple: Past, Present, Future
August 9 – December 7, 2025
James W. Mitchell, Jr., Center, and Interactive Galleries 
Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art
Tarpon Springs, Florida

The Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art proudly presents Jeff Whipple: Past, Present, Future, a retrospective celebrating five decades of provocative, concept-driven work by Florida-based artist Jeff Whipple. Known for his signature three-line motif known as the “spanasm” and a razor-sharp wit, Whipple’s multidisciplinary practice spans painting, video, performance, and installation, exploring themes of mortality, identity, and the absurdity of modern life. 

Over the past fifty years, he has built a unique style that includes drawing, painting, sculpture, theater, digital media, and public art, often blurring the lines between them. His work reflects a lifelong investigation of what it means to perceive, interpret, and inhabit the world, filtered through a lens that is at once skeptical, incisive, and marked by a wry, understated humor.

This exhibition traces the evolution of his singular visual language—from early existential compositions to recent works that invite viewers to consider how imagination shapes our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. At turns engaging, irreverent, and delightfully bizarre, Whipple’s work offers a poignant, and at times humorous reflection on what it means to be human in an ever-shifting world.

Past, Present, Future, on view August 9 through December 7, 2025, is Whipple’s first major retrospective since 2001 when the former Gulf Coast Museum of Art organized his 25-year retrospective which traveled throughout the state of Florida. Past, Present, Future showcases eighty works by Whipple created over the course of 50 years and includes paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, and four interactive stations showcasing a selection of his multi-media films and digital installations. Visitors can also try their hand at Whipple’s interactive miniature golf course in the museum’s Interactive Gallery.