FLORIDA PLACE TO EXPLORE
The Ringling
Sarasota County · Gulf Coast
John Ringling's bayfront estate, now the official state art museum of Florida, holding a great deal of Rubens and the first circus museum in the country.
ABOUT THIS PLACE
John Ringling made a fortune in the circus and spent a large part of it on European art. He began building the museum on June 27, 1927; it opened briefly in 1930 and 1931 and properly on January 17, 1932. When he died in 1936 he left the property, the collection and an endowment of 1.2 million dollars to the people of Florida. The art museum holds over 10,000 works, strongest in sixteenth to twentieth century European painting, and the group of Peter Paul Rubens canvases is the reason art historians come. The Circus Museum, added in 1948, was the first in the United States to document circus history, and it holds the Howard Bros. model circus, a miniature of an entire traveling show. Ca' d'Zan, the Ringlings' house, stands on the bay at the edge of the grounds. The Historic Asolo Theater, an eighteenth-century Italian playhouse moved here piece by piece, is on the campus too. Florida State University has run it since 2000
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