Winter 2006
RINGLING REVIVAL
Restoration of an 18th century treasure signifies a full-scale renaissance now under way in Sarasota.
When he died at the age of 69, John Ringling—who had enjoyed life as one of the richest tycoons in the world—had a total bank account of three hundred and eleven dollars.
Born into a poor Iowa farm family, Ringling had parlayed his gifts as a born showman and a knack for making money into a world-traveling circus empire and an immense personal fortune. But a series of bad business calls, along with the crash of '29, eventually brought him to his knees financially. Toward the end, Ringling could easily have rescued himself from the ignominy of it all by selling off the vast collection of art and antiquities that he and his beloved wife Mable had built a museum around on their estate in Sarasota, Florida.
But that's the one thing the fallen "circus king" couldn't bring himself to do. So, to protect his precious art collection from annihilation by creditors, he willed over all his holdings, including Cà d'Zan —his elegant, 32-room mansion—his art museum and all its contents to the state.
When Ringling died in 1936, the State of Florida soon found itself in the business of guarding and caring for a collection of rare art worth untold millions—a task it was ill equipped to handle. For the remainder of the century, the odd, state-estate marriage had its good days, but somehow never got fully consummated. Ringling's marvelous bequest became a political no-man's land, a troubled treasure with a dubious future.
Finally, in 2000 the Florida Legislature handed the keys to Ringling's incredible legacy to a long-time friend of the estate's, Florida State University. Since then the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art has blossomed, and may very well be on the road to becoming "the Lincoln Center of the South," the vision of some key boosters.
This fall, the Ringling neared completion of a $76 million construction and restoration campaign that will vault the complex into an even more rarified niche in the art world. Already home to the 16th largest collection of art in the U.S.—and the largest and most diverse collection managed by a single university—the Ringling Museum will soon boast one of the largest art conservation laboratories (at 4,000 square feet) in the Southeast, perhaps rivaled only by a lab run by Atlanta's High Museum of Art. Scheduled to open early in 2007, the lab will be part of an educational facility holding classrooms and a 65,000-volume art library.
The Ringling's current conservation lab, headed by chief conservator Michelle Scalera, soon will find itself-for the first time ever-with room enough to expand its small staff and meet the growing challenge of overseeing the museum's priceless treasures.
Now into her 25th year at Ringling, Scalera has witnessed as few have the gradual transformation of the museum and its surroundings into a world-class art facility that offers rare opportunities not just to arts aficionados but to serious students of art history, art conservation and museum management as well.
"We have come such a long, long way, and now we're poised for an even brighter future," Scalera said. "People who've not visited this facility in some time really don't know what they're missing."
When the dust finally settles on all current construction this spring, the Ringling will boast a total of four new buildings, effectively doubling the size of the complex. In addition to the education/conservation facility, the museum will expand by an entire new wing, where exhibitions of masterworks on loan from Washington, D.C.'s Corcoran Gallery of Art and elsewhere were being scheduled in the fall.
John and Mable's fabulous bayside residence Cà d'Zan (fresh from a six-year $15 million refurbishing completed in April 2002 and celebrating its 80th anniversary this December) remains the estate's crown jewel, but this fall all the buzz was over the newly restored, and reinstalled, historic Asolo Theater.
Scalera and her team (conservation assistant David Piurek and conservation technician Shay Sampson) engineered a two-year, $500,000 rebirth of the Asolo, an asset that has graced the grounds for 56 years. Originally built in 1798 in a castle in Asolo, Italy, in 1950 A. Everett "Chick"Austin, then director of the Ringling Museum, bought the crated-up remnants of the theater for $8,000 and had them shipped over, restored and reassembled on site. The historic Asolo Theater rapidly became a catalyst for Sarasota's cultural life, serving as the incubator for a variety of art-oriented start-ups such as The Sarasota Opera, the Asolo Repertory Theatre and La Musica International Chamber Music Festival.
Scalera's team had the daunting task of cleaning, restoring, and remounting, with the help of architects, more than 1,000 individual pieces of the historic theater, which had to be rescued from the deteriorating structure built to house it in 1960. Originally made from pinewood cut from the hills surrounding 18th century Asolo, the theater's dominant features are 72 highly ornate and brightly colored panels designed to circumscribe the theater's U-shaped interior. Roughly 900 hand-carved ornaments of varying sizes, also made of pine, adorn and complement the panels and were badly in need of repair.
One of the biggest challenges? Scalera said the team's talents—and patience-were stretched to the limit in trying to match 200-year-old colors with new paint, a task that required tedious testing and remixing to find the precise color matches -some found only in Europe-that worked. Also challenging was the application, by hand and a square inch at a time, of over 3,000 leaves of 23.5 karat gold leaf, required to re-gild over 2,800 linear feet of re-created molding plus repairs to many of the 890 original ornaments.
Because of its complexity, the project ultimately required outside help from architects, carpenters, engineers, technicians and fabric specialists. Once all the lab work was finished, installation of the restored pieces took six months to complete in the theater's new 285-seat home inside the Ringling's new, $11 million Visitors Pavilion.
On the evening of Oct. 6, patrons attending an opening-night gala were dazzled by headliner performances, which included diva Susan Graham of the Metropolitan Opera, in Asolo's glittering new quarters. The occasion revived the theater's reputation as a regional "jewel box" that made its early years in Sarasota so special half a century ago.
The scope of Ringling's holdings being what it is—art treasures spanning 5,000 years, along with furniture, light fixtures, tapestries, glassware, curios and assorted other antiquities—the need for expansion of its curatorial and conservation resources has been apparent for years, Scalera said. With the massive Asolo project behind her, there's no shortage of new ones to tackle—and a special one tugs at her heart.
Back at the height of The Roaring Twenties when he still had money, John Ringling spent a lot of it ($25,000) on one of the finest pipe organs made in the world at that time—the Aeolian Duo—art. Ringling had his architects build the giant sound system into the very foundation of Cà d'Zan. When he and Mable hosted special events, the stone house resonated with music that spilled out onto the veranda and rolled clear across Sarasota Bay.
Aptly dubbed "the organ of millionaires," John and Mable's music machine has lain broken and mute for three decades. Scalera would dearly love to give the 80-year-old, labyrinthine contraption-with its 2,289 zinc pipes—a new lease on life. But the cost-latest estimate, $185,000 and climbing-might make Ringling blanch even in his salad years.
For now, a restored Ringling pipe organ remains a pipe dream-but a passionate conservator's one, nonetheless.
"The organ is really a work of art," Scalera said. "I can't imagine a finer tribute to Mr. and Mrs. Ringling than to have it restored to the way they heard it so long ago."
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