Here, in an extraordinary place is an extraordinary collection of art. From the Rubens Galleries to Joseph’s Coat: a skyspace by James Turrell, view the permanent collection’s treasures, the fascinating exhibitions from around the world and the classical sculptures that fill the grand courtyard. The State Art Museum of Florida, this awe-inspiring museum was originally built by famed circus impresario John Ringling as a legacy to the citizens of Florida. This is a place of beauty and wonder.
In 1925, circus impresario John Ringling (1866–1936) decided to build an art museum, both as a legacy meant to outlast his business interests and as a memorial to his wife Mable and himself. By sharing the arts of Europe with the people of Florida, Ringling sought to educate and encourage curiosity for the wider world.
John H. Phillips designed the Museum—a pink, Renaissance-style palace with 21 galleries enclosing a courtyard graced with copies of iconic sculptures. First opened in 1930, Ringling filled the Museum with European paintings, paneled rooms from the Gilded Age Astor mansion in New York, and ancient and medieval objects purchased from distinguished collections. Upon his death in 1936, Ringling bequeathed the Museum to the people of Florida.
Reinstallation Project
The Ringling is in the process of reinstalling the Museum of Art’s original 21 galleries. Hundreds of works of art from The Ringling’s permanent collection will be examined, interpreted, and arranged in new ways. Through new thematic arrangements and updated wall treatments, lighting, and labels, the reinstallation project will transform the visitor experience of our permanent collection. We appreciate your understanding and look forward to sharing the results of this important work with you. As the reinstallation project progresses, certain galleries may close temporarily and objects may be removed from the galleries where they are normally displayed.
A History of the Museum of Art
John Ringling was one of the early 20th century’s most prolific collectors of art. The Museum of Art is his legacy. In 1905 Ringling married Mable Burton, a woman who shared his love for and taste in art. Soon after their marriage they became fixtures in New York’s art auction houses, buying paintings, furniture and tapestries from the homes of the wealthy and socially prominent for their own growing collection. In 1924, the Ringlings met the prominent German art dealer Julius Böhler, a relationship that would prove crucial to Ringling and his growing interest in collecting art.
The Ringlings had been traveling through Europe for years and had fallen in love with Baroque art. In 1925 he hired architect John H. Phillips to design and build a museum on his Sarasota property to house his ever-growing collection. What Phillips designed was a U-shaped pink palace with 21 galleries to house Ringling’s treasure trove of paintings and art objects, highlighted by a collection of masters that would eventually include Velazquez, El Greco, Van Dyck, Veronese, Tiepolo, Gainsborough and Rubens. Paired perfectly with the Renaissance-style of the Museum, the Museum of Art’s Courtyard embodied the ideals of the Renaissance garden. Its long loggias flank a central courtyard that features an impressive group of early twentieth-century bronze and stone casts of famous Classical, Renaissance, and Baroque sculptures, among them, at its heart, Michelangelo’s David from Palazzo Vecchio in Florence.
Ringling hoped that by building the Museum he would make Sarasota a cultural and educational center. To achieve his vision he began buying comprehensive collections with prestigious provenances, beginning with the purchase of three rooms complete with furnishing, paintings and architectural finishes from the Astor Mansion and a villa in the Tuscan countryside. He also purchased four tapestry paintings, oil on canvas, by the Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens from the Duke of Westminster. Today these magnificent paintings welcome you as you enter the Museum’s gallery and are the foundation of the Museum’s extraordinary Baroque collection.
Between 1925 and 1931, Ringling acquired more than 600 Old Master paintings from the Late Medieval thorough the 19th century. His purchase of Rubens’ Pausias and Glycera was considered so significant that Art Digest reported on it. In 1928, Ringling made another significant acquisition that was to form the core of his classical antiquities collection, 2800 objects of Greek, Roman, and Cypriot antiquities from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Excitement about his collection was growing in art circles; the New York Times did a full-page article about the purchase, praising not only the collection but the Museum and its surroundings as well. That same year he bought the Parisian Gavet Collection, 300 hundred pieces of Late Medieval and Early Renaissance decorative art, sculpture and religious liturgical objects from the Vanderbilt’s Marble House in Newport, Rhode Island.
In his will Ringling bequeathed his museum to the people of Florida, a gift he hoped would achieve his vision of creating in Sarasota a cultural and educational center. Hurt by the Depression, Ringling had fallen into debt and creditors and legal wrangling would delay the settling of his estate for a decade. Funds were poorly managed and the endowment Ringling left languished and barely grew. The Museum was only occasionally opened between 1936 and 1946 and not properly maintained. Gradually, the care that the buildings required were either put off or handled piecemeal.
But while the Museum struggled with a lack of finances, a series of Directors continued to foster its artistic growth, most notably A. Everett (Chick) Austin, Jr. the charismatic former Director of The Wadsworh Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut who became the Museum’s first Director and Curator in 1946 and served until his death in 1957.
Other Directors followed and made their contributions: Kenneth Donahue, who served from 1958 until 1964 established the Member’s Council and started the quarterly newsletter; Curtis Cooley, the Director from 1965 to 1972 oversaw the completion of the West Wing and established the Museum Foundation; Richard S. Carroll created the Docent Program and had the Museum added to the National Register of Historic Places during his tenure from 1973 to 1984; Laurence Ruggiero, who served as Director from 1985 until 1992 established the Museum’s archives, during David Ebitz’s Directorship from 1992 until 2000 governance of the Museum was passed to Florida State University (FSU).
The state promised to fund immediate repairs and in 2002 provided through FSU another $43 million to fund restoration of the Ringling – provided the museum board could raise another $50 million within five years. Thanks community efforts and truly generous public support, they exceeded beyond expectations and more than $56 million was raised by 2007.
In 2016, the 25,000-square-foot Ting Tsung and Wei Fong Chao Center for Asian Art opened and includes galleries dedicated to rotating installations of The Ringling’s Asian art holdings, a 125-seat lecture hall, an object and print study room, and open storage spaces to increase public access to the collections. As a complement to the Ting Tsung and Wei Fong Chao Center for Asian Art, a Japanese tea house (chashitsu) was designed and built in the Bayfront Gardens. The Nancy L. and George R. Ellis Tea House was designed to marry the traditional tea house with our local architectural heritage.
The Keith D. and Linda L. Monda Gallery for Contemporary Art is devoted to artists working in the 20th and 21st centuries. Many of the contemporary pieces that will be displayed in the Monda Gallery have been acquired over the past five years from major exhibitions associated with The Ringling’s Art of Our Time initiative as well as through generous contributions from donors.
The momentum of these and other recent Museum of Art successes have accelerated exciting plans for new acquisitions, buildings and programs, fulfilling John Ringling’s dream of a great cultural center on Florida’s West Coast.