John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art
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The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art is an art museum located in Sarasota, Florida. It was established in 1927 as the legacy of Mable and John Ringling for the people of Florida. Designated as the official state art museum for Florida, the institution offers twenty-one 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 wide 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, 17th, and 18th century European paintings, including a world-renowned collection of Peter Paul Rubens paintings and cartoons.
Aside from the art museum which immediately distinguished Sarasota as the cultural center of the state of Florida, the estate of Mable and John Ringling also features Mable Ringling’s rose garden, which was completed in 1913 near the original Mary Louise and Charles N. Thompson residence within the beautifully landscaped grounds overlooking Sarasota Bay, Cà d'Zan ("House of John"), the waterfront residence they designed and built in 1926, and a museum devoted to the Ringling Brothers Circus. Cà d'Zan was restored in 2002 under the direction of Francis J. Puig during his tenure as curator of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art.
