Related Link: FSU Home Page

The Florida State University and Ringling Museum partnership brings together resources to establish a comprehensive arts and cultural complex for Sarasota and Florida. This is the heart of the plan. The foundation for the complex is in place. The community already boasts the Sarasota Ballet, Film Festival, Symphony, Sarasota Opera, and many other arts organizations and activities. The Art Museum, Ca' d'Zan, Circus Museum, and the Asolo Theater in the Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts, form the basis upon which university programs will be able to build. The university is deeply involved in the disciplines reflected by these resources. University expertise and talent will invigorate the existing enterprise and introduce new perspectives.

The FSU-Ringling arts complex will focus on the following four areas:

1. Visual arts study, including exhibitions of historical and contemporary art with accompanying programs, studio art instruction, and art education;
   
   
2. Performing arts including theatre, dance, music and circus;
   
   
3. History and cultural programs including preservation of Ca' d'Zan and public and oral history projects;
   
   
4. Arts and cultural education from K-12 through the university level, including professional museum training and continuing education.

The university will develop the primary partnerships and integrate them, as appropriate, through its well-established and experienced arts divisions -- the Schools of Visual Arts & Dance; Music; Theatre and, possibly, Film. These schools assure opportunities for a comprehensive arts program.

Collaboration in the Visual Arts

The art museum is the jewel in the FSU Ringling Center crown. For more than fifty years, the Ringling Museum has served the public with outstanding exhibitions of art. Ringling art collections include 10,000 objects and center around four major collecting areas: Italian and Flemish Baroque, antiquities, the decorative arts, and 20th century American art.

University Study and Research

Related Links: Department of Art History Department of Classics Program at Cetamura, Italy

FSU faculty and student scholars, especially those from the FSU Department of Art History, are proficient in the areas represented by the Ringling collections. FSU has the premier art history department in the state and is the only major university in Florida and one of very few in the southeast to offer the Ph.D. in art history. The strength of the department is bolstered by a close collaboration with professors from the Department of Classics. The faculty includes scholars of ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, and modern art whose knowledge, study and interpretation will enrich the Ringling Museum. Art history students and faculty regularly address museum issues in general and Ringling issues in particular, whether they are theoretical or practical.

The Ringling has been host to FSU scholars, including graduate students in the past and it should now be possible to expand these opportunities. FSU envisions a scholar-in-residence program and an annual curatorial fellowship that will increase understanding of Ringling collections and make possible scholarly symposia and publications.

During summer terms, graduate students will be invited to apply for Ringling Curatorial Fellowships through which students will have the opportunity to research museum objects and develop curatorial skills.

The FSU classical scholars and archaeologists are closely connected to the art historians and they will study and interpret John Ringling’s Cesnola collection of 2,300 Cypriot antiquities. Each year, the Langford Eminent Scholar Chair brings classical scholars to Florida who will have ample opportunity to visit and make presentations at the Museum. It may be appropriate to hold one of the Langford Symposia at the Museum; this would bring international attention to both the Ringling and this respected, annual presentation in the field of classics. Like the Langford Scholar, the Appleton Eminent Scholar in Art History, as will be discussed later, is similarly positioned to contribute to and benefit from the Museum.

The classics department also sponsors an archaeological site in Cetamura, Italy, along with a small museum near the site. The museum is opening in the summer of 2000. The collection of Etruscan artifacts from the FSU site would be complementary to items in the Ringling collection. Students trained at the site would be another resource of expertise available to the Ringling Museum.

FSU’s Museum Operations

Related Links: Appleton Museum of Art Museum Studies at FSU

University faculty, students, and administrators are accustomed to dealing with the operational end of the art museum business, as well as matters of scholarship. For example:

• The School of Visual Arts & Dance is firmly established in the museum world, administering two art museums and offering the premier museum studies program in the state.
  
  
• The Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts, located on the FSU campus, is a well respected example of the best in university art museums.
  
  
• The university’s Appleton Museum of Art, held in partnership with Central Florida Community College and administered by FSU, is one of Florida’s larger art museums, comprising 66,000 square feet. This museum’s recent exhibitions include "Matisse and the Inuit Face," "Helen McNicoll: A Canadian Impressionist," "Art of Our Century, Parts I and II," and "African American Art: 20th Century Masterworks."
  
  
• The FSU art museums have a proven track record of successful collaborations that bridge the academic community with students at all levels and the general public. They share exhibitions and collections on a regular basis (e.g., recent shows such as "ABC’s of Pop," "The Abridged Walmsley," "Concealing/Revealing: Voices from the Canadian Foothills"). Staff and associated faculty from each museum share their expertise with each other as well. This activity encourages education and research and is expected to expand funding opportunities. Each museum welcomes the Ringling Museum as a sister institution. Now, the potential exists for shows and programs to travel between two or among all three entities. The triangle of institutions in north, central and south Florida will provide a geographical and cultural network that will open opportunities throughout the state.

Coordination among museums can result in excellent programs being created at one site and touring to the other two. This makes good economic sense. Tours involve cost to the secondary sites (shipping, insurance), but they are far less expensive and the exhibitions far greater in quality, if the major annual projects of each of the three museums can be shared and exported to each of the three sites. This frees up budget at each location for doing better single projects -- rather than each museum funding a full slate of projects individually from scratch each year.

We can also introduce important shows that expand the Ringling's exhibition programming. Such exhibitions are years in the planning. For example, Dr. Roald Nasgaard, chair of FSU’s Department of Art, is curating an exhibition on the renowned artist Helmut Federly for the Albright-Knox Museum scheduled to open in 2003. This show is planned to tour to other equally esteemed American museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, and the Contemporary Art Museum in Houston. If funding is provided, The Ringling Museum could be added to the major museums hosting this exhibition and others like it.

As an inaugural collaboration, we propose identifying resources for an exhibition and education program drawn from the historical collections of the Ringling Museum of Art and the Appleton Museum. The exhibition will have a sound art historical theme, identified and developed by an art historian such as Professor Robert Newman who has the appropriate expertise to work with the Ringling collections of Baroque art. The exhibition would travel among the three FSU museums and could travel to other museums around the country. Such an exhibition might also be part of a future "Seven Days of Opening Nights," the annual FSU festival of the performing and visual arts which is held just before full legislative activity picks up. Museum educators and university students would devise curriculum tied to the exhibition with a special emphasis on K-12 education for public school students. As is customary, a publication would be produced to accompany the exhibition, highlighting the collection and documenting appropriate research, offering greater exposure to these art treasures.

In developing such shows, it will be important to ensure that the core Ringling collection not be diminished and that fragile works of art are not placed at risk.

Related Link: FSU Museum of Fine Arts

The FSU Museum of Fine Arts with its Museum Press is especially adept in the area of publishing. Among its productions are pertinent and scholarly museum catalogues and the art history journal "Athanor." Given the resources of the Ringling Museum, the Appleton Museum and the FSU Museum, the School of Visual Arts and Dance is considering a proposal to expand the publishing venture. Proposed new publishing ventures suggested in this conceptual plan will require additional funding. The new "MuseumS Press" would produce museum catalogues, scholarly journals and texts on an expanded level. A special project suggested for the press is "Florida Art Books," an idea emanating from FSU’s commitment to Florida artists.

We can start to expand FSU’s Museum Press to embrace both Appleton and Ringling publications. The press could work with a number of designers and keep multiple projects on target for all three museums. Recently, the press embraced a project of the Classics Department, "Cetamura Antica," producing the catalogue for the Italian exhibition that opens this coming July, under the directorship of Professor Nancy de Grummond. As with this catalogue, our goal is to showcase FSU’s art research to an international audience of scholars and connoisseurs.

The permanent collections of the Appleton Museum augment and complement Ringling’s large collections. In particular, the recent drive to acquire twentieth-century and contemporary art coincides with similar interests in Sarasota. The Appleton Museum has launched a fundraising campaign to acquire work, including that of Florida artists. The museum’s new $4 million Edith-Marie Appleton Wing houses a conference center equipped with a computer lab. In Art History and Museum Studies, videoconferencing has allowed FSU students in Tallahassee to benefit from lectures by British Museum curators and museum administrators. The capacity of the Ringling to participate in these conferences needs to be evaluated.