Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 4, 1990 TAG: 9003042257
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: George and Rosalie Leposky
DATELINE: SARASOTA, FLA. LENGTH: Long
In this culture-minded city south of Tampa Bay on Florida's Gulf Coast, tomorrow's technology is helping to preserve centuries-old masterpieces at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art. The excitement of live theater is being heightened at the new Asolo Center for the Performing Arts.
In the art museum, which circus magnate John Ringling paid $30 million to erect in 1927-29, a $20 million modernization project is nearing completion.
George Sexton, a lighting and exhibition consultant from Washington, D.C., restored the shell of Ringling's ornate Italianate building and redesigned the galleries within. Sexton used the original ceilings and crown moldings to conceal air conditioning, lighting and security equipment. His state-of-the-art lighting design balances intensity and color temperature to illuminate the art without fading it. Gallery walls painted in neutral shades both complement and focus attention on the works of art.
A highlight of the project was the Feb. 21 reopening of the North Wing gallery housing the Ringling's most famous works - four huge cartoons (patterns painted for the weavers of The Triumph of the Eucharist tapestry series) by the 17th Century Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens. These magnificent paintings depict: "Abraham Receiving Bread and Wine from Melchizedek," "The Fathers of the Church," "The Four Evangelists" and "The Israelites Gathering Manna in the Desert." Each measures about 13 feet by 16 feet. They spent more than a year entombed in the museum's former gift shop, hermetically sealed against the dust of construction, carefully wrapped and constantly cooled by their own heavy-duty air conditioner.
The art museum's restoration and renovation began in 1982 and should be complete this year. The South Wing opened in June. Five other galleries in the North Wing opened in February along with the Rubens gallery. The rest of the North Wing is due to open at the end of September.
The art museum's new permanent displays reflect John Ringling's penchant for the opulence of Baroque art, which predominates among the 625 paintings he collected. In addition to the Rubens cartoons, he acquired smaller paintings by Rubens and works by Thomas Gainsborough, El Greco, Frans Hals and Rembrandt van Rijn. The museum owns more than 10,000 items, including 1,000 paintings, 2,500 prints and drawings, 24 tapestries and 400 sculptures.
Also part of the modernization project is the Ringlings' 30-room mansion, Ca'd'Zan (Venetian for "House of John"), modeled after the Doge's Palace in Venice. Although open to visitors while restoration proceeds, it lacks much of its ornate art work and furniture. Museum spokeswoman Patricia Ringling Buck (a grandniece of John Ringling) says Ca'd'Zan should be restored in time for a gala reopening celebration scheduled for January 1991.
Before his death in 1936, John Ringling willed to the citizens of Florida the 66-acre Ringling complex, including the museum and Ca'd'Zan. Litigation among his heirs prevented the state from taking possession until 1946, and continues over a provision in John's and Mabel's wills that they be buried in a mausoleum carved into a wall of the museum. Pending resolution of that dispute, the Ringlings' remains are in temporary crypts in New Jersey.
Controversy also surrounds the Circus Galleries, which reopened in January 1989. A museum for circus memorabilia built on the Ringling grounds in 1948, it spent four decades as a charmingly cluttered "attic" for prominent circus families, most of whom are outraged at how George Sexton redesigned the place. He created stylized displays that lack identifying signage, and relegated to storage such notable relics of circus history as Emmett Kelly's "Weary Willie" clown costume.
In limbo is a large shed with antique wagons and equipment recreating the back lot of an early 20th-century tent show, once the circus museum's most popular feature. It was closed to the public in 1983 and converted to storage and work space, though many of its artifacts remain.
Still on view are portions of the museum's circus-costume and poster collections, several ornate parade wagons, a large three-ring-circus diorama and a truck-mounted cannon that once hurled members of the Zacchini family skyward as human cannonballs.
Also scheduled for restoration is the Asolo Museum Theater, which Buck says the Ringling staff plans to use for art lectures, symposia and other educational purposes. The Italian Baroque interior of a 300-seat theater, it was built in 1798 in Queen Caterina Cornaro's 15th-Century castle in Asolo, Italy. The museum acquired the theater's antique proscenium arch, box fronts, ceiling decorations and ornamental details in 1950, and installed them within a modern building on the Ringling grounds in 1957.
The Asolo became Florida's first state theater. From 1960 to 1989, it housed Florida State University's graduate theater-arts program and a professional equity company. Last December, both moved across Bay Shore Road to the new, technologically sophisticated Asolo Center for the Performing Arts. Actor/producer Burt Reynolds, an FSU alumnus, helped build the new center by donating a $1 million challenge grant that attracted $3.5 million more.
The new Asolo Center's exterior respects the Italianate style of the nearby Ringling art museum. Inside, the 499-seat mainstage theater houses green-and-gilt pilasters and pediments, florid ceiling cherubs and other lavish interior details created in 1900 and 1919 for the opera house in Dunfermline, Scotland, by Roy Jackson. The Asolo Theater Co.'s inaugural season of equity productions runs in repertory through the end of July. Spring and summer productions include the world premiere of Horton Foote's "Talking Pictures," Robert Harling's "Steel Magnolias" and Ronald Bazarini's new drama "Quarry."
by CNB