The Ringling: Why Florida's Greatest Museum Deserves More Attention
John Ringling's improbable vision produced one of America's finest collections of Baroque painting — and a campus of remarkable buildings on the edge of Sarasota Bay.
By Edit Sarasota
John Ringling was not supposed to create one of America's great museums. He was a circus impresario from Baraboo, Wisconsin, who made his fortune in the years when rail-borne spectacle was America's mass entertainment. That he spent the last years of his life acquiring old master paintings and constructing a Venetian-Gothic palace on the shores of Sarasota Bay remains one of American cultural history's more improbable stories.
The collection Ringling assembled in the 1920s is genuinely extraordinary. His purchases in Europe, made during a period when economic disruption following the First World War put old collections on the market, included works by Rubens, Velázquez, Poussin, and Gainsborough that would be the centerpieces of any museum in the country. The cycle of large Rubens canvases depicting the Triumph of the Eucharist remains one of the most significant collections of Baroque painting in the United States.
The building Ringling constructed to house his collection — he called it Ca d'Zan, the House of John, following Venetian tradition — is itself a work of serious architectural ambition. The Venetian Gothic palace sits on a bayfront loggia that catches the light in the late afternoon in a way that makes clear Ringling had some genuine understanding of what he was doing architecturally.
Since the state of Florida assumed ownership of the property in 1946, the museum has grown substantially. The Modern Wing, designed by John Volk and completed in 1966, handles the American and contemporary collections with considerable grace. Recent renovations have restored the Rubens gallery and the Ca d'Zan to something approaching their original conditions.
What the Ringling has not always done well is communicate its significance to the world beyond Sarasota. It remains genuinely unknown to most serious museum-goers who have not visited. That is their loss, and a curatorial challenge worth meeting.