Monday, March 18, 2024

The Greatest Show on Earth

 In 1989, Howard Feld, CEO of the owner of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus commissioned William Woodward to paint a mural illustrating the highlights of the circus over time, including many of its best known performers.

The brilliant mural originally greeted visitors to the circus headquarters in Virginia.  It was later moved to Sarasota along with the circus' headquarters.  It is too big to capture in a single image.





Linked to Monday Murals.

Sunday, March 17, 2024

St. Patrick's Day Parade

Naples has a very big St. Patrick's Day parade.  I interrupt the images from Sarasota to show far too many photographs from the parade that took place yesterday.






Before the parade.


Collier County Sheriff Kevin Rambosk never misses the opportunity to march in the parade.








Yes, St. Patrick himself appears in Naples!

Saturday, March 16, 2024

Howard Bros. Circus

 One huge -- and I mean HUGE -- room in the Ringling circus museum is filled -- and I mean FILLED -- with detailed model circus scenes for the Howard Bros. Circus.  This imagined circus was created by and  named for Howard C. Timbals, a Ringling museum trustee, donor, circus historian, and model builder.








 It is unfathomable the amount of time, effort and money that Mr. Timbals put into recreating this circus, not to mention to collecting the other circus paraphernalia that he donated to the museum.
Well done, Mr. Timbals.

Friday, March 15, 2024

Ringling Circus Museums

 Across the way from the Ringling art museum are two buildings housing circus museums.

One room exhibited a number of circus vehicles, including wagons for circus animals.


As the circus' "advance man," John Ringling traveled the country from place to place in "Wisconsin," his luxurious private rail car.


 On the left is the vehicle for launching human cannonballs.  At the far end are large portraits of circus performers, including a bearded lady, a Texas "giant" and an albino family.

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Ringling Art Museum's Sculpture Garden

 

In addition to a wonderful art collection, the galleries surround a terrific sculpture garden.


A handsome couple was posing for engagement or wedding photos in the sculpture garden.  I sneaked a photo while they were walking to a different part of the garden.

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art

 

We visited this superb art museum in Sarasota.


Entering the museum, a visitor gets hit -- pow!  -- with a roomful of huge Rubens canvasses. 






This was a fascinating painting.  It is a fragment of a 400 foot long painting by Alfred Stevens for a panorama for the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris. The Panorama contained 641 portraits of famous men and women of the century from 1789 to 1889.  The woman in white is Sarah Bernhardt.


Part of a fireplace surround from the Huntington museum in New York.

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Historic Spanish Point

 Though we visited Selby's Historic Spanish Point campus to see the Clyde Butcher photography exhibition, we discovered that the campus had much charm aside from the photography exhibition.


A small chapel with lovely stained glass windows was erected by the family of a young woman who had fallen ill and died while visiting the Webb estate.


A small cemetery is neighbor to the chapel. 



Maybe it was the influence of Clyde Butcher's photographs, but I found myself admiring (and photographing) too many of the trees to show here.



A small building illustrated the historic ways of sorting and packaging citrus fruit.


Out the back of that building, there was a boardwalk leading to a beautiful view of Sarasota Bay.

There is an attractive sunken garden and pergola.

It was a pretty place just to walk around.