The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, as it is formally known, is breathtakingly beautiful. This beautiful museum, which was founded in 1927, houses over 10,000 pieces of art in various media. In the year 2000, the museum was taken over by Florida State University. View the permanent collection’s treasures, interesting exhibitions from across the world, and classical sculptures that fill the vast courtyard, from the Rubens Galleries to Joseph’s Coat: a skyspace by James Turrell. The State Art Museum of Florida is an awe-inspiring museum that was established as a gift to the inhabitants of Florida by famous circus magnate John Ringling. This is a magical and beautiful place. John Ringling (1866–1936), the founder of the circus, planned to create an art museum in 1925 as a legacy that would survive his commercial interests and as a tribute to his wife Mable and himself. Ringling hoped to educate and foster curiosity about the rest of the world by sharing European arts with the people of Florida. John Ringling was a renowned art collector in the early twentieth century. The Museum was built by John H. Phillips and is a pink Renaissance-style palace with 21 galleries and a courtyard filled with replicas of famous statues. Ringling filled the Museum with European paintings, paneled chambers from the Gilded Age Astor estate in New York, and antique and medieval antiquities acquired from prestigious collections when it first opened in 1930. Ringling left the Museum to the people of Florida when he died in 1936. The museum has 21 galleries with European paintings, antiquities from Cyprus, and Asian, American, and modern art. The museum’s art collection now numbers over 10,000 pieces, including paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photos, and decorative arts from ancient to contemporary times and from all over the world. The museum’s most well-known exhibits are European paintings from the 16th to 20th centuries, including a world-renowned collection of Peter Paul Rubens works. Benjamin West, Marcel Duchamp, Mark Kostabi, Diego Velázquez, Paolo Veronese, Rosa Bonheur, Gianlorenzo Bernini, Giuliano Finelli, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Frans Hals, Nicolas Poussin, Joseph Wright of Derby, Thomas Gainsborough, Eugène Boudin, Benedetto Pagni, El Greco, Van Dyck, Veronese, Tiepolo, and Rubens are some of the other artists represented. The property has grown to almost 150,000 square feet (14,000 m2), with the addition of the art museum, circus museum, and rebuilt Ca’ d’Zan, the Ringlings’ residence, as well as the old Asolo Theater. The McKay Visitor’s Pavilion, the Kotler-Coville Glass Pavilion displaying studio glass art, the Johnson-Blalock Education Building housing The Ringling Art Library and Cuneo Conservation Lab, the Tibbals Learning Center with a miniature circus, the Searing Wing, a 30,000-square-foot (2,800 m2) gallery for special exhibitions attached to the art museum, the Chao Center for Asian Art, and the Monda Gallery for Contemporary Art are among the new additions to the campus.

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