If you’re ever in Sarasota, Florida visit the John and Mable Ringling Art Museum. It’s really more than one museum and hard to see in an afternoon. One afternoon was all I had so I just had time to visit the Ringlings’ fantasy Venetian palazzo and the Circus Museum leaving the Art Museum with its collection of Old Masters and the miniature circus exhibit for another visit. I love things that are a study in contrast and I love things that give us a peek into another, world different from our own. The Ringling fit the bill.
The Ca d’Zan, the Ringlings’ Italianate mansion has a wide terrace that ends at Sarasota Bay, panoramic views and opulent rooms (including guest bathroom medicine chest doors and bedroom closet doors that when opened greet guests with graceful paintings on their other sides) but my favorite was the artwork of illustrator William Pogany visible in John Ringling’s game room on the top floor and in the ballroom downstairs. Full of energy and riotous, vibrant color the fantastical creatures and clowns cover the vaulted ceiling and support columns of the game room and dancers, dressed in foreign costumes, dance on the ceiling of the ballroom downstairs. They’re quite a contrast to the rest of the house.
Learn all about the circus and The Ringling Bros. Circus, in particular, at The Circus Museum. I found the photographs that documented how the big top went up in each small town it played in fascinating. They would start in the morning and have it up and ready for the two o’clock performance in the afternoon. The elephants even helped! Often the circus played just one day in each town so after the day’s performance the big top was dismantled and they moved onto the next town where the whole process was begun again. I also found intriguing how the five Ringling brothers ran their business. The majority was never in the right automatically. Instead if one or two of them had an idea that the rest were not too keen on, the majority argued their position. If the minority held firm then the majority acquiesced and the idea was implemented. Circus posters, clown cars, costumes, etc. are all here but I really wish there was a big top with all the sights and sounds of that old time circus.
