A project by the Coastorama Cooperative, which is students of the Fall 2019 University of South Florida School of Art and Art History class “Sponge Exchange,” and their instructors Hope Ginsburg, John Byrd, and Maxwell Parker.


Coastorama is a series of eight, hand-crafted dioramas focusing on the coastal climate crisis in Florida and its most impacted species. The installation was made in collaboration with students from the USF School of Art & Art History. Each diorama took inspiration from Spongeorama, the idiosyncratic sponge diving dioramas of Tarpon Springs. Coastorama was a collaborative pedagogical project produced for Ginsburg’s 2020 Sponge Exchange exhibition at USF Contemporary Art Museum. All projects in the exhibition were entirely collaborative, proposing the ecological premise of sharing of resources, ideas and opportunities.