Big top to the big time

Always more than just a circus and art museum, the Ringling Museum may be poised for even greater things as a major overhaul aims to create a world-class cultural destination.

By LENNIE BENNETT
© St. Petersburg Times
published June 16, 2002

[Drawings courtesy of Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum Inc.] Architect Yann Weymouth painted these preliminary renderings of additions and new buildings in the Ringling complex. TOP: The new galleries in the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art as seen from the south loggia. MIDDLE: The sculpture court, created by glassing in the interior courtyard of the new galleries at the art museum. BOTTOM: The interior of the 60,000-volume library located in the Education Center.

SARASOTA -- If, as executive director John Wetenhall declares, "The story of the Ringling Museum is 70 years of lost opportunities," the sequel could be one of spectacular recovery.

Gov. Jeb Bush signed off last week on a budget that allocates more than $43-million for a major expansion of the museum complex aimed at changing how visitors see and use circus magnate John Ringling's legacy to the state.

The Ringling, Florida's official state museum, includes two museums, a historic mansion and 66 acres of waterfront property. Along with another $6.5-million donated by a wealthy Tennessee businessman, the new state allocation is intended to expand the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art and the Museum of the Circus, and build a visitors' center and an education center that will include a new library. A $15-million restoration and renovation of Ca d'Zan, the Ringlings' historic mansion, was completed earlier this year.

The expansion, which could be completed in four years, will give the Ringling more gallery space for traveling exhibitions than any other bay area museum and make it possible to bring in some of the large, more prestigious exhibitions that have bypassed Florida's west coast. That, a greater emphasis on education and more visitor amenities are expected to dramatically increase attendance at the complex, which has been under the auspices of Florida State University for the past two years.

"This will be one of the most important projects in all of Florida," said FSU president Talbot "Sandy" D'Alemberte. "It's an extraordinary investment that will give a good return to Florida."

Such largesse in a tight budget year has caused grumbling in some quarters. But supporters of the project say it rectifies the wrongs of many decades, reversing a pattern of state neglect that started when John Ringling signed his museum, his home and his collections over to Florida in 1936 before his death that year.

Righting past wrongs

"In 1936," said Wetenhall, "John Ringling left $1.2-million to preserve and perpetuate his museum. In 2000, when the museum was transferred to Florida State University, that endowment was only $1.8-million. It has been neglected and passed by, in gradual decline as operational funding failed to meet the needs."

In 1937, the legislature reluctantly accepted ownership, but wrangling among family members, creditors and the IRS over Ringling's estate delayed transfer of the property for a decade. During that time, the buildings and their contents -- including baroque masterpieces, furniture, books and artifacts -- languished, with some of the art irreversibly damaged.

Although the state has pumped millions of dollars into the Ringling over the years, its fortunes have always been tied to budgetary and political whims.

"To someone from another part of the state," said state Senate President John McKay, "they're concerned about issues in their district. It's easier to support a hospital in your district than a major overhaul of a museum."

So in spite of having one of the finest public art collections in the United States, a peerless waterfront location, a unique historic mansion and a trove of circus artifacts, the Ringling never could count on an adequate stream of tax dollars. And although it draws as many as 300,000 visitors a year, admission fees are only enough to keep the museum open, not to restore deteriorating buildings and grounds. At the same time, the Ringling's status as a government-owned institution inhibited private fundraising.

"The state thought it was a local problem," said Wetenhall, "and the local community thought it was a state problem."

A savvy deal

The most prominent author of change has been McKay, a Bradenton resident and longtime museum supporter. He brokered a deal in 2000 that transferred management of the Ringling complex to Florida State University, his alma mater.

It was a controversial move since the Ringling is adjacent to New College, which was at that time part of the University of South Florida. (It is now an independent state college.) But the affiliation made sense, since FSU already offers a master's degree program in Sarasota, operating out of the Asolo Theater for the Performing Arts and the FSU/Asolo Conservatory.

In a savvy move for the museum, its budget became part of FSU's budget, and so the museum was eligible for funds designated only for building projects at state schools.

"Those funds are generated from taxes on utilities and can be used for capital outlay at educational facilities," McKay said. "Gov. Bush surprised me when he commented that funding the Ringling would rob women and children of meaningful programs. The money used for the Ringling could not have been used for women and children."

FSU's board of trustees still must sign off on the budget, but D'Alemberte said he's optimistic about its approval.

The building plan is much more than a facelift and some extra square footage. It's really directed at creating the image of a large complex of equally important attractions that could take more than an afternoon or a day to visit and can be marketed to national and international visitors.

"To date," said Yann Weymouth, the main architect, "this has been seen, even by John and Mable Ringling, as a museum and a residence. John Wetenhall's insight has been to say it's really three museums in a beautiful park. That's a big shift of paradigm."

"Is there another comparable venue?" asked D'Alemberte. "If you put together the whole package, it's something unique in this country and in the world. The impact it will have in drawing people here. . . . Florida begins to identify itself as something other than Disney World and Miami Beach."

Weymouth, vice president and director of design for the Florida offices of the international architectural firm Hellmuth, Obata+ Kassabaum, has impressive credentials. He was design architect for the Grand Louvre project in Paris under I.M. Pei in the 1980s and 1990s and chief of design for a major addition to the National Gallery of Art in Washington in 1979.

His job in Sarasota is to create a seamless addition to an iconic museum building, along with new buildings that complement the 1920s architecture but do not mimic it.

"The new buildings should not pretend to look like the old buildings. There are enough bad imitations of the Mediterranean style," Weymouth said.

The entrance to the Ringling complex has always been through the stately columns of the John and Mable Ringling Museum. That will change.

"So long as it is the main entry, it's the star," said Weymouth. "If you move the entrance, you're saying something completely different to the visitor. The gate house to Ca d'Zan was where John and Mable Ringling drove through every time they entered. Visitors should enter through that gate for the first time, too."

Click for larger map Ringling expansion: A preliminary map of proposed additions, new buildings and landscaping on the Ringling site, still undergoing review and modifications. The original entrance to Ca d’Zan will become the main entrance to the complex and lead to a new Visitors’ Center. From there, trolleys will take visitors to an expanded Museum of the Circus; to Ca d’Zan, the Ringlings’ historic waterfront mansion; to the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art that will have a new wing for traveling exhibitions; and to a new Education Center, with classrooms, conservation area, archives and a library.

A tour of the grounds

After passing through the arch of the gate, visitors will enter a two-part building of about 40,000-square-feet bisected by the original drive. One side will include the ticket office, a gift shop and areas for student drop-offs. Visitors will go to the other side to see a short orientation video. That side also will hold the old Asolo Theater interior, its 18th century paneling refitted and a new professional stage built around it, to be used both by the museum and the theater department.

The 1950s building that was built to house the original Asolo will be demolished. Along the back of the visitors' center will be a restaurant overlooking three new ponds, dredged and landscaped to look like natural lakes.

No cars will be allowed on the grounds. Trolleys will connect the circus museum, Ca d'Zan and the art museum.

The Museum of the Circus will be expanded to include the Tibbals Learning Center, named for Howard Tibbals, a wealthy Tennessee collector of circus memorabilia. It will be designed by John Toppe of Harvard Jolly Cleese Toppe Architects, a St. Petersburg firm. Besides $6.5-million, Tibbals is donating his 3,000-square-foot circus model, considered the most elaborate in the world, including a working train with 120 cars into which everything can be packed. The second floor of the center will have interactive exhibits, and a tent pitched outside will emulate a "big top," celebrating the great performers of circus history. Archives from the Ringling and other circuses and a collection of circus posters will be housed there, too.

"It will be the greatest circus museum in the world," D'Alemberte said. "We hope it will be a place for further research for American studies; the circus has been an important institution in our culture."

The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art will get a new 30,000-square-foot wing, its exterior an almost exact copy of one Ringling had drawn up in the 1920s but never could afford to build. Square in shape, it will be attached to the north galleries and will be able to accommodate one large and two smaller traveling shows at once. The new central courtyard will be glassed over to be used as a sculpture garden and for museum functions. The gift shop will be moved so that the gallery it occupies -- one of the museum's most beautiful with original friezes and a huge stone fireplace -- can again exhibit art. And the unsightly admissions tables will be gone from the front hall, restoring the front rooms as Ringling designed them.

The core collection of 17th century paintings by Italian and northern European masters, for which the Ringling is famous, will not be rearranged, Wetenhall said, and he was not specific about plans to show more of its collection of modern art. But the additional gallery space will allow for the exhibition of at least part of the Koger Collection, a collection of Chinese ceramics given to the museum in 2001 and valued at $10-million.

A bridge from the museum's west wing, where the administrative offices are, will be built to the new 70,000-square-foot Education Center with meeting space, classrooms, storage, archives and a new library. It will house the museum's 60,000-volume collection of art books, now crammed into crowded stacks in the museum office.

The education center, said Wetenhall, is especially important. "It's one of the best collections in the Southeast, but it's had no room for visitors. A major library, archives and classrooms -- things the Ringling should have had 30 years ago. Now that it's a university museum, it's vital."

The center also will include the most sophisticated conservation lab in the South. The museum already has a conservation staff, but lack of space hampered its work, Wetenhall said. The Ringling will be able to accept conservation work from other institutions and offer apprenticeships.

Big as the new allocation is, it won't cover exhibits for the circus museum, landscaping or the expenses associated with bringing in large traveling shows. Operating expenses, about $8-million this year, will increase with the added space and programming. But the expectation is that more visitors and renewed interest from the community will generate income. Wetenhall is committed to creating a significant endowment.

"What John Ringling left us is priceless," D'Alemberte said. "All of us plan a vision and see if we can get other people to buy into it. Florida is finally buying into Ringling's vision."

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