Florida Getaways 2008

In Search of Circus By Karen Feld When a child of the circus returns to Sarasota as a visitor, she ﬁnds that the legacy of America’s circus history When my father, Irvin Feld, and his partners purchased Ringling Bros. isn’t conﬁned to museums. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in 1967, it was the ﬁrst time in a century that the show had been out of the Ringling family. The symbolic transfer of ownership was staged in the ancient Coliseum in Rome, where John Ringling North, who had been running the show, presented me with a tiger cub. As an animal lover, I was disappointed that I couldn’t take the cub home with me. Instead, for my ﬁll of all things circus, I visited the Sarasota area each December to watch the Ringling show rehearse for the upcoming season at its headquarters in nearby Venice. Not having been back in years, I returned to the area this fall. While the actual circus has moved, what I found was a place where the circus’s heritage lives on proudly. Ringling’s vision Sarasota’s claim as the “the circus capital of the world” is undisputed. The city represents the culmination of the vision of legendary circus impresario John Ringling, who settled in the mid-1920s in what was then a tranquil ﬁshing and farming village. His vision helped transform the area, which became associated with every aspect of the circus. His “house” would be the ﬁrst stop on my visit. When I walk through the pink Venetian-gothic gate to John and Mable Ringling’s estate, I am reminded that it takes a full day or two to explore the museum complex, which includes much more than a world-class art collection. The museum reﬂects the personal worldview of Ringling, one of the world’s greatest showmen, combining both visual and performing arts. One all-inclusive ticket got me access to the restored Asolo Theater; the 21-gallery art museum (the ofﬁcial State Art Museum of Florida, which houses Ringling’s collection of Baroque paintings as well as traveling exhibits); the restored Ca’ d’Zan mansion (“House of John,” in Venetian dialect) overlooking Sarasota Bay; and the circus museum, which was established in 1948, all set on 66 landscaped acres. The grounds include Mable’s Rose Garden with more than 1,200 varieties. Top, child-friendly exhibits at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota. Bottom, a tiger at Kay Rosaire’s Big Cat Habitat in Sarasota. 21

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Florida Getaways 2008 Contents Shorts: Visit A Port or Airport Deals: Join a Museum Water: On Lake Apopka Suite History Circus City Listings: Florida Vineyards Ad Index Florida Maps Looking Back: On Old Florida

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