Ringling Museum opens its first permanent ancient-art gallery

"In 1928, John Ringling of the Ringling Bros circus acquired around 3,300 pieces of ancient Mediterranean art that had been in the collection of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met). The auction sales made headlines and put the man known as the "circus king" on the map as a major art collector. Today, the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida, has the third-largest collection of ancient Cypriot art in North America-behind the Met and the Penn Museum in Philadelphia."

""It was John's idea to build this museum in Sarasota, when there was really nothing comparable in the entire region, and he is collecting on a very grand scale while he is building," Sarah Cartwright, the Ringling's chief curator, tells The Art Newspaper. Ringling was especially prolific in collecting paintings by European masters like Titian, Peter Paul Rubens and Diego Velázquez."

"Ringling had plans for a grand pavilion to display these objects, ranging from limestone statues of deities adorned with red paint to silver jewellery decorated with animals. The 1929 stock-market crash, followed by Ringling's death in 1936, led to the work largely remaining in storage aside from a few temporary exhibitions. Nearly a century later, the Ringling Museum is finally opening its first permanent ancient-art gallery this weekend."

John Ringling acquired about 3,300 ancient Mediterranean objects from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1928, forming a large Cypriot collection now housed in Sarasota. The material includes limestone deity statues painted with red pigment, silver jewellery decorated with animal motifs, and other ancient Cyprus artifacts. Ringling also amassed European masterpieces by Titian, Rubens and Velázquez, reflecting a desire to link classical art to later European painting. Plans for a grand pavilion to display the antiquities were derailed by the 1929 stock-market crash and Ringling's death in 1936, leaving much of the material in storage. The Ringling is now opening its first permanent ancient-art gallery, with several objects never previously exhibited.

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