John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art

The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art is the official state art museum of Florida,[2] located in Sarasota, Florida.[3] It was established in 1927 as the legacy of Mable Burton Ringling and John Ringling for the people of Florida. Florida State University assumed governance of the museum in 2000.[4]

The institution offers 21 galleries of European paintings as well as Cypriot antiquities and Asian, American, and contemporary art. The museum's art collection currently consists of more than 10,000 objects that include a variety of paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints, photographs, and decorative arts from ancient through contemporary periods and from around the world. The most celebrated items in the museum are 16th–20th-century European paintings, including a world-renowned collection of Peter Paul Rubens paintings.[5] Other artists represented include Benjamin West, Marcel Duchamp, Mark Kostabi, Diego Velázquez, Paolo Veronese, Rosa Bonheur, Gianlorenzo Bernini, Giuliano Finelli, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Frans Hals, Nicolas Poussin, Joseph Wright of Derby, Thomas Gainsborough, Eugène Boudin, and Benedetto Pagni.

In all, more than 150,000 square feet (14,000 m2) have been added to the campus, which includes the art museum, circus museum, and Ca' d'Zan, the Ringlings' mansion, which has been restored, along with the historic Asolo Theater. New additions to the campus include the McKay Visitor's Pavilion, the Kotler-Coville Glass Pavilion exhibiting studio glass art, the Johnson-Blalock Education Building housing The Ringling Art Library and Cuneo Conservation Lab, the Tibbals Learning Center complete with a miniature circus, the Searing Wing, a 30,000-square-foot (2,800 m2) gallery for special exhibitions attached to the art museum, the Chao Center for Asian Art, and the Monda Gallery for Contemporary Art.[6][7]

A. Everett (Chick) Austin Jr., a member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians and, from 1927 to 1944, the innovative director of the Wadsworth Atheneum, was the Ringling Museum's first director.[8]

John Ringling willed his property and art collection, plus a $1.2 million endowment, to the people of State of Florida upon his death in 1936. One instruction of the will states that no one has permission to ever change the official name of the museum. For the next 10 years the museum was opened irregularly and not maintained professionally, Ca' d'Zan was not opened to the public, while the State fought with Ringling's creditors over the estate (Ringling was nearly bankrupt at his death; Florida would finally prevail in court in 1946). Even after prevailing in court, the Florida Department of State (who had initial responsibility for the Museum) did virtually nothing to manage the endowment or maintain the property, while the local community (believing the Museum to be the State's responsibility) did little to support the Museum. By the late 1990s Ca' d'Zan was falling apart (as were the exterior footpaths and roads), the Museum had a serious roof leak plus its security systems were wholly inadequate to protect its collection, and the Asolo Theater building was actually condemned, while the $1.2 million endowment had grown to only $2 million.[9]

The State of Florida transferred responsibility of the Museum to Florida State University in 2000.[4] As part of the reorganization it created a board of trustees consisting of no more than 31 members, of which at least one-third must be residents of either Manatee or Sarasota counties.[10]

In 2002 it appropriated $42.9 million in construction funds, with one condition: the Museum had to raise $50 million in private sector support within five years; the Museum raised $55 million by the deadline.[9]

In January 2007, a $76-million expansion and renovation of the Museum of Art was finished. A new Arthur F. and Ulla R. Searing Wing was added—the new wing being the final component of a five-year master plan that has transformed the museum. It is now the sixteenth largest in the United States.[6]

In 2013, The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art was renamed The Ringling.[clarification needed]

Aside from the art museum, the estate also contains the Ringling's mansion, Ca' d'Zan, Mable Ringling's rose garden, the Circus Museum and Tibbals Learning Center, the historic Asolo Theater, the Ringling Art Library, the Secret Garden, gravesite of John and Mable Ringling and the FSU Center for the Performing Arts. [1][2]

Ca' d'Zan, (Venetian for "House of John"), is the waterfront residence built for Mable and John Ringling. The mansion was designed by architect Dwight James Baum with assistance from the Ringlings, built by Owen Burns, and was completed in 1926.

It is designed in Venetian Gothic style. Overlooking Sarasota Bay, the mansion became the center for cultural life in Sarasota for several years.[11] The residence was restored in 2002.

John Ringling owned a private railroad car and used it from 1905 to 1917 to travel with his circus, take vacations, and conduct business trips. Ringling named it after his home state of Wisconsin, which was also where his circus was quartered.

The Wisconsin was built by the Pullman Company in Pullman, Illinois. Its cost of $11,325.23 was only about half the price of a comparable Pullman train car of the time, as it was outfitted with walls taken from other railroad cars. The wooden observation car weighs 65 short tons (59 metric tons) and is 79 feet (24 m) long, 14 feet (4.3 m) tall, and 10 feet (3.0 m) wide. It is divided into an observation room, three staterooms, a dining room, a kitchen, a bathroom, and servants' quarters. The interior is made of mahogany and other woods, intricate moldings, gold-leaf stencils, and stained glass. The 10-foot high ceilings are painted viva gold, baize green, and fiery brown.

When New York City banned wooden train cars from its tunnels, John Ringling decided to sell the Wisconsin. Later, the Norfolk Southern Railroad purchased the train car and renamed it Virginia; the railroad used it as a business car for its officials. It was then sold to the Atlantic & East Carolina Railway, which renamed it Carolina, adapted it into a fishing lodge, and placed it in Morehead City, North Carolina. The North Carolina Transportation Museum became the next owner of the train car and kept it in covered storage on its grounds in Spencer, North Carolina.

The Wisconsin's next and current owner became the John and Mable Ringling Museum.[12] A $417,240 federal grant awarded to the Florida Department of Transportation helped pay for the restoration of the Wisconsin's exterior, which was carried out by the Edwards Rail Car Company in Montgomery, Alabama. An anonymous donation of $100,000 then brought the Wisconsin's interior back to its Gilded Age state, the work for which was done at the museum. The Sarasota County Parks and Recreation Department donated railroad tracks, which became available as part of the Rails to Trails project, for the train car. The rails were laid by volunteers from the Florida Railroad Museum in Parrish, Florida.

Ringling Art Library

Statue in the Mable Ringling Rose Garden
The Ringling Art Library is one of the largest art reference libraries in the southeastern United States.[13] Though it has been a part of the Ringling Museum of Art since its opening in 1946, the library gained a permanent home and reading room in 2007.[14] the library was originally located inside one of the two late 19th interiors designed by Richard Morris Hunt. It was in gallery 20, the Astor Gallery (it was originally the oak paneled library of John Jacob Astor). The first 500 books were art books that John Ringling bequeathed to the state of Florida.[15] The collection of nearly 90,000 volumes includes some 800 books originally owned by John Ringling himself and the collection of the Ringling's first director, A. Everett Austin, Jr. The collection covers the 16th-21st centuries and topics like fine and decorative art, art history, architecture, fashion, and theater.[13] The library contains 70, 000 items including a collection of rare books from 16th century to the present, collections of European Art (especially renaissance and baroque, favorites of John Ringling) Asian Art, Studio Glass, Circus history and culture, 60 thousand books and other materials spanning the entire history of art and architecture, and hundreds of specialized art databases. It even contains a facsimile of the Guttenberg Bible, gifted to John Ringling by a German rare book collector.[16]

The Library hosts a free book club, the Literati Book Club, which discusses famous authors & art history.[17] Each month, the Literati Book Club offers two meetings at which the same book is discussed; on one day the meeting is in the evening and the other day the meeting is in the morning.[17] Currently, in 2021, and until further notice, the Literati Book Club is meeting via Zoom.[18] Other regular events include a Saturday for Educators Workshop series which is designed to enhance educators’ understanding of The Ringling's collections and special exhibitions, while also providing an opportunity for networking, collaboration, and inspiration.[19] The Ringling Art Library also hosts an online blog.[20] The library is open to the public and there is a reading room for patrons to view and use materials; however, the collection is non-circulating and items cannot be checked out.[21]

The Art Library maintains a large digital image collection of items within Special Collections through Flickr. The Library is a non-circulating research library. The Library has open stacks, and you may browse through the collection and enjoy the materials in the Library's Reading Room.[22] As a part of Florida State University libraries, researchers at the Ringling have access to an ebook library, scholarly databases, and curated research guides. The library is one of the 11 libraries of the Florida State University Library system. It is also one of the largest and most comprehensive art research libraries in the southeastern US.[23] The collection is also searchable through the FSU Libraries Catalog. Admission to the library is free, and open to the public on weekdays, from 1–5.[24]

The Secret Garden
In 1991, John, Mable and his sister, Ida Ringling North, were buried on the property just in front and to the right of the Ca' d'Zan. It is called the secret garden and John is buried between the two women. There is a locked gate around the 3 graves and tombstones. There is a garden and statues in front of the gate. During the day, during visiting hours, the gate is unlocked and opened. On the anniversary of John Ringling's birthday, neighboring New College students will often sneak in and place a cigar on John's grave.

oday, The Ringling, the State Art Museum of Florida, is home to one of the preeminent art and cultural collections in the United States. Its story begins nearly a century ago, with the circus impresario and his beloved wife’s shared love for Sarasota, Italy, and art.

The Building of Ca’ d’Zan
John Ringling was one of the five brothers who owned and operated the circus rightly called “The Greatest Show on Earth.” His success with the circus and entrepreneurial skills helped to make him, in the Roaring Twenties, one of the richest men in America, with an estimated worth of nearly $200 million.

In 1911, John and his wife, Mable, purchased 20 acres of waterfront property in Sarasota. In 1912, they began spending winters in what was then still a small town. They became active in the community and purchased more and more real estate, at one time owning more than 25 percent of Sarasota’s total area.

After a few years the couple decided to build a house and hired the noted New York architect Dwight James Baum to design it. Mable, who kept a portfolio filled with sketches, postcards and photos, wanted a home in the Venetian Gothic style of the palazzi in Venice, Italy, with Sarasota Bay serving as her Grand Canal. Construction began in 1924 and was completed two years later at a then staggering cost of $1.5 million. Five stories tall, the 36,000 square foot mansion has 41 rooms and 15 bathrooms.

Mable supervised every aspect of the building, down to the mixing of the terra cotta and the glazing of the tiles. Today, the entrance to the grounds is through the Venetian gothic gateway where the Ringlings welcomed their guests to the opulent Ca’ d’Zan, or “House of John” in the Venetian dialect.

The Museum of Art
While traveling through Europe in search of acts for his circus, John Ringling, in the spirit of America’s wealthiest Gilded Age industrialists, began acquiring art and gradually built a significant collection. The more he collected, the more passionate and voracious a collector he became, educating himself and working with dealers such as Julius Bohler. He began buying and devouring art books – that would become the foundation of the Ringling Art Library.

Soon after the completion of Ca’ d’Zan, John built a 21-gallery museum modeled on the Florentine Uffizi Gallery to house his treasure trove of paintings and art objects, highlighted by his collection of Old Masters, including Velazquez, Poussin, van Dyke and Rubens. The result is the museum and a courtyard filled with replicas of Greek and Roman sculpture, including a bronze cast of Michelangelo’s David.

John opened the Museum of Art to the public in 1931, two years after the death of his beloved Mable, saying he hoped it would “promote education and art appreciation, especially among our young people.” Five years later, upon his death, Ringling bequeathed it to the people of Florida.

A Period of Decline
Hurt by the Depression, John had by the time of his passing, fallen into debt. Creditors and legal wrangling would delay the settling of his estate for a decade. While the state prevailed and took control in 1946, funds languished. The $1.2 million endowment Ringling left was poorly managed and barely grew. Between 1936 and 1946 the Museum was only occasionally opened and not properly maintained. Ca’ d’Zan was used privately and remained closed to the public.

Gradually, the care that the buildings required – weatherproofing, mechanical upgrades, and maintenance of Mable’s gardens – was either put off or handled piecemeal. Some private donors came forward to help keep the Museum open, while a dedicated, but severely underfunded staff struggled to fulfill the Museum’s potential.

The Circus Museum and Historic Asolo Theater
There were, however, some bright spots during this period. In 1948, the Museum’s first Director, A. Everett ‘Chick’ Austin, Jr., used Ringling memorabilia to open the first Circus Museum. In 1950 Austin oversaw the purchase of all the decorative elements of a theater originally built in 1798 by architect Antonio Locateli. The theater was originally located in the castle of Queen Caterina Cornaro, the Venetian-born widow of the King of Cyprus, in the town of Asolo near Venice, Italy.

Plans were finally made in 1954 for a separate building to be constructed for the theater off the west end of the Museum’s north wing. The building was constructed, the theater installed during 1955-56, and then completed in 1957. The U-shaped theater, with three tiers of boxes adorned by decorative panels, was used for plays, concerts, operas, lectures, films and other cultural programming. But because of its immense popularity as the center of Sarasota’s culture life, restoration was difficult and long-term deterioration was inevitable. It was finally closed to the public in the late 1990s and remained unused until The Ringling’s recent renaissance.

A New Beginning
In 2000, after years of negotiation, the state passed on governance of the Museum to Florida State University (FSU). As part of the arrangement, the state promised to fund immediate repairs and in 2002 provided through the University another $43 million to fund all four buildings – the Museum of Art, Ca’ d’Zan, Circus Museum and Historic Asolo Theater – provided the Museum board could raise another $50 million within five years. Thanks to a heroic effort by some in the community and truly generous public support, they exceeded beyond expectations and more than $56 million was raised by 2007.

As importantly, a new Director, John Wetenhall, was appointed in 2001 and under his care The Ringling experienced an extraordinary rebirth. A new roof was put on the Museum of Art and the galleries refurbished. Ca’ d’Zan underwent a $15 million restoration. The Historic Asolo Theater was restored and moved inside the new John M. McKay Visitors Pavilion, designed by Yann Weymouth, chief architect for the Pyramide du Louvre and East Wing of the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., as well as the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.

The John M. McKay Visitors Pavilion was one of four new buildings added. The Circus Museum Tibbals Learning Center, was built featuring the world’s largest model circus, the Howard Bros. Circus Model, built over 50 years by master model maker and philanthropist Howard Tibbals. A state-of the-art Education Center was also built with storage facilities, offices and an art library that has become an essential resource for scholars, educators and students. The crowning touch, the Searing Wing, provides more than 20,000 square feet of exhibition space capable of accommodating up to four exhibitions at a time. In 2011 Joseph’s Coat, a Skyspace by modern master James Turrell, became part of the Museum’s permanent collection.

To the delight of all, the Tibbals Learning Center has since expanded with the opening of its interactive family galleries, inviting all to experience the excitement of a day at the circus while preserving the legacy of the Museum’s founder and circus king, John Ringling.

In 2013 the David F. Bolger Playspace opened. Made possible by the Bolger Foundation, the Playspace was designed to engage visitors of all ages and abilities in spontaneous play, creating for families and school groups a place to gather and enjoy their visit.

In 2016, the Ting Tsung and Wei Fong Chao Center for Asian Art opened. The Center for Asian Art will enable the public to better understand and appreciate Asian history and society through exhibitions, programs, and publications. It will help to make the Museum an emerging center for Asian Art studies in the U.S.


Mable Burton Ringling (1875-1929)
When and how Mable Burton met John Ringling is today a matter of conjecture. What is known is that they married on December 29, 1905 when she was thirty and he was thirty-nine. By all accounts their marriage was a happy one in which they delighted in their shared interests in travel, art and culture.

Like her husband, Mable Burton Ringling was a woman of humble origins. Born on March 14, 1875 in the farming community of Moons, Ohio, Mable was one of five daughters and a son born of George Wesley and Mary Elizabeth Burton. By the turn of the 20th century, she left Ohio to pursue her future.

During her travels with John, Mable fell in love with the grace and grandeur of Venice. In 1923, they commissioned the architect Dwight James Baum to build their dream home, modeled on the Doge’s Palace and the Cá d’Oro in their beloved Venice.

Mable oversaw every aspect of the construction, from the glazing of the tiles to the mixing of the terra cotta. She designed much of the original landscaping on the grounds of the estate, including her Rose Garden and Secret Garden. And while the house was to be called Ca’ d’Zan, Venetian dialect for “House of John”, it was really, as one writer later observed, truly “John’s love letter to Mable.”

The house, completed in 1926, soon became the site of lavish musicales, as well as garden and dinner parties. There were Gatsbyesque parties that lasted till dawn, with an orchestra playing from the Ringling yacht moored just off the marble terrace, entertaining guests such as the Governor of New York Al Smith, comedian/philosopher Will Rogers, New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker and famed producer Flo Ziegfeld and his wife Billie Burke, best known as Glenda, the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz.

Though it was John who took the lead in building the collection that has become the foundation of the Museum of Art, Mable was listed on the Museum’s charter as a Director and Vice President of the Museum’s Corporation.

Like John, she favored purchasing items at auction. At the George J. Gould estate sale in 1924, she drew attention as a “conspicuous buyer,” purchasing many items well above their estimated worth, among them a $10 phone for which she bid and paid $75. Among the Museum’s archives her notes to herself about not only what to buy, but also about where she wanted her purchases placed in the mansion.

Suffering from diabetes and Addison’s disease, Mable passed away on June 8, 1929. It was a loss from which John never really recovered. They had found in one another a shared love of travel, art and culture, of things Italian and of Sarasota, where this remarkable woman left the rich legacy we are fortunate to still enjoy today.


John Nicholas Ringling (1866-1936)
The man who would one day build a great circus empire was born on May 31, 1866 in McGregor, Iowa, to August Ringling, a German immigrant harness maker and his wife, Marie Salomé Juliar. He was the second youngest in a family of seven brothers and one sister.

In 1884 five of the brothers, including John, joined with another showman to form “The Yankee Robinson and Ringling Bros. Double Show.” It was the only time they would ever accept second billing. By 1888, they’d become the "Ringling Brothers United Monster Shows, Great Double Circus, Royal European Menagerie, Museum, Caravan, and Congress of Trained Animals" and were charging 50¢ for adults and 25¢ for children.

In 1889, the brothers made the move from animal-drawn wagons to railroad cars and they became the first circus to truly travel the country. Indeed, by 1890 the New York Times described John, who had started with the circus as a clown, and was now acting as its advance man, scheduling, contracting and booking acts as, “a human encyclopedia on road and local conditions.” Later the Ringling Bros. Circus would cross the country in a 100 rail-car caravan each season.

In 1905, John married Mable Burton in Hoboken, New Jersey. He was thirty-nine; she was thirty. Two years later the Ringling brothers bought the Barnum & Bailey show for $410,000. It proved a fortuitous investment, as they became the “Kings of the Show World”.

Soon Ringling was investing in railroads, oil, real estate and any number of other enterprises, including Madison Square Garden, where he became a member of the Board of Directors and major investor. In 1925, his personal wealth, holdings and companies were estimated at nearly $200 million.

John’s brother Charles had begun purchasing land in Sarasota, Florida and in 1911 John and Mable purchased 20 acres of waterfront property there. In 1912, they began spending winters in what was then a small town. In the 1920s, they became active in the community and purchased more and more real estate. At one time, John and Charles owned more than 25 percent of Sarasota’s total area.

In Sarasota, John became a formidable force in the Florida land boom of the 1920s, buying and developing land on the Sarasota Keys, where he hoped to create a fashionable winter resort that would rival the popularity of the state’s East Coast resorts. In 1927, he moved the circus’ winter headquarters of the circus to Sarasota from Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Like many wealthy Americans at the turn of the 20th century, the Ringlings made annual trips to Europe, where John found new acts for the circus. Together with Mable and the aid of a Munich art dealer named Julius Bohler, John began collecting art by Old Masters such as Rubens, van Dyck, Velázquez, Tintoretto, Veronese, El Greco, Gainsborough and others that were the beginnings of the extraordinary collection of art that today fills The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art.

They also frequented New York’s more exclusive auction houses, purchasing furnishings, tapestries and paintings from the homes of the City’s socially prominent 400. These pieces, along with the paintings, were displayed in the Ringlings’ homes in New York City, Alpine, NJ and Sarasota. Today, many of these pieces can be found in the Museum of Art and Ca’ d’Zan, the mansion John and Mable built in the Venetian Gothic style they so greatly admired.

With the purchase of the American Circus Corporation in 1929 for $1.7 million, John, who had taken over the management of The Ringling circus after the death of his brother Charles, now owned most traveling circuses in America. Six feet in height, he was known as a soft-spoken, reserved gentlemen who preferred finely tailored suits, fine cigars and his own private-label bourbon.

Sadly, his reign as “King of the Sawdust Ring” was short-lived. Declining health, over-extended finances, the stock market crash of 1929, and the ensuing Great Depression, as well as an unfortunate second marriage to a young widow, Emily Haag Buck, a year after his beloved Mable’s death, all contributed to his fall.

On December 2, 1936, still marking catalogues for possible purchases and planning a circus spectacle called “Golden are the Days of Memory,” the boy from McGregor who had become the “King of the American Circus” died of pneumonia, at age 70, in his home on Park Avenue, New York.