Fifty-seven original Picasso prints are hanging inside a brand-new gallery at the corner of University Drive and Sample Road right now, and most people in Coral Springs still think the city's art museum is somewhere else.
That confusion is fair. For nearly three decades, the Coral Springs Museum of Art lived inside the Center for the Arts on Coral Springs Drive, tucked into a building that started life as something else entirely. This summer, the museum finally moved into a space built for it. The opening exhibition is a traveling Picasso collection on view through September 26. After that, it's gone. If you've been meaning to see it, the clock is the story.
A Gallery That Started Life as a Gym
When city commissioners debated spending $3.4 million to build the museum's new downtown home, Director of Arts & Cultural Enrichment Mike McNally made a point of explaining why the old space never quite worked. The gallery the museum had used since 1997 wasn't designed as a gallery at all. It began as part of a 1996 city project for a general recreation and community center, before the plan shifted toward a performance theater and museum. McNally told commissioners the current space traced back to a gymnasium, and that a purpose-built room would finally give the museum the acoustics, lighting, and layout flexibility a working gallery actually needs.
That distinction matters more than it sounds. A converted rec room can display art. It can't control the light hitting a century-old etching the way a room engineered for exhibitions can, and it can't be reconfigured for a 57-piece traveling show the way a dedicated 8,100-square-foot gallery can. The new location sits inside the Cornerstone development, the mixed-use district rising at University Drive and Sample Road, and it was designed from the studs out as museum space rather than adapted into one after the fact.
The Vote That Almost Didn't Pass
Getting there wasn't unanimous. On December 3, 2025, the city commission approved the $3.4 million build-out by a 3-2 vote, split over cost rather than concept. The project drew on roughly $2 million from the city's capital budget, $1 million from the Community Redevelopment Agency, and about $500,000 in landlord and tenant improvement allowances. Commissioner Shawn Cerra, participating by phone from his daughter's wedding, argued the price tag was hard to justify for a leased space.
"This is too much money for a space that we don't own."
Commissioner Joshua Simmons made the counterargument, and he did it with a number that's easy to check. Broward County has 31 municipalities. Of those, he said, only Fort Lauderdale and Coral Springs have a museum of art. Simmons also pushed back on the idea that this was money spent on something extra, describing how often he'd heard from residents either say they didn't know we had a museum, or that the city should be doing more with the one it had.
Construction started in January 2026, and by June, contractors had finished interior concrete work, electrical and fire alarm rough-ins, and plumbing inspections, with the city projecting a late summer opening that included a ribbon-cutting, guided tours, and live music.
What Closed First, and Why That's Worth Knowing
Before the museum could open downtown, it had to close on Coral Springs Drive. The farewell show ran June 5 through August 1 and paired two very different bodies of work under one roof. The centerpiece was 45 large-format Everglades photographs by Clyde Butcher, drawn from a career spanning more than five decades and including work shot in Cuba, the Czech Republic, and Spain. Alongside it ran a contemporary multimedia exhibition marking the 250th anniversary of American independence, built around landscapes, waterways, and the kinds of everyday spaces people usually stop noticing.
Museum Director Juliana Forero framed the pairing as an invitation to experience the land not only as scenery, but as something deeply tied to memory. It was a fitting note to end on. The old gallery had spent nearly thirty years showing Coral Springs its own region, and it closed by looking one last time at the Everglades sitting just west of the city limits.
Picasso, for Three More Weeks
The new gallery didn't open with another local retrospective. It opened with Picasso.
The show, Picasso: A Graphic Journey, features 57 original prints made between 1923 and 1972, spanning etchings, lithographs, and linocuts, along with one rare cancelled copper printing plate. The works come from the collection of Timothy Collins of Los Angeles, and the exhibition includes an essay from curator Eric Mourlot. One of the more striking inclusions is a series of proofs for Tête de Femme au Chapeau, which lets a viewer trace the piece from early color studies through to the finished composition, something most single-print displays never allow you to see.
According to the museum's own listing, the show has been on view since August 19 and closes September 26. That timing lines up with the late summer opening the city had been projecting for months, and it means the debut show in Coral Springs' first purpose-built gallery is now in its final stretch, with three weeks left before it comes down for good. Admission is free.
A few practical notes if you're planning a visit before the show comes down:
- The gallery is inside the Cornerstone development at University Drive and Sample Road, not the old Center for the Arts building on Coral Springs Drive.
- Because the location just changed, confirm current hours directly through the museum's website before you go.
- The city has also opened applications for a $75,000 public mural at the new downtown location, so expect the building's exterior to keep changing even after Picasso comes down.
- Family programming under the ARTventures banner has run on the second Saturday of the month at the old location, and the museum's monthly MIX Happy Hour has served as its recurring adult event. Both are worth watching for on the new calendar.
What This Says About the City
A rec center that quietly became an art museum in 1997 is a very different institution than one that opens a downtown gallery with a touring Picasso collection. The choice to inaugurate the new space with an internationally recognized name instead of another homegrown showcase is itself a signal. Coral Springs isn't just relocating a community amenity. It's positioning the museum as a reason to come downtown, not an afterthought once you're already there for something else.
Whether that bet pays off depends on whether residents actually make the trip while Picasso is still on the wall. Three weeks is not a long runway, and the show won't be extended past September 26. After that, the gallery moves on to whatever comes next, and the story becomes less about a single exhibition and more about whether Coral Springs' first real museum space can keep drawing people back.
If you're the kind of person who tracks what's changing in this city block by block, that's exactly the kind of shift worth watching. For more on what's happening around Coral Springs, from openings to neighborhood changes, The Schirripa Group keeps a closer eye on this market than most. Reach out anytime you want a local read on what's actually happening here.
