Museum of Art

European travel kindled a passion for art and collecting in John and Mable Ringling.  In the 1920s, John Ringling became a regular at the New York and London auctions. He purchased important works by Titian, Veronese, Rubens, Hals, and Velazquez. Ringling also acquired important decorative arts and a collection of Cypriot, Greek and Roman antiquities from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

In 1925, Ringling commissioned the New York architect John Phillips to design a building befitting of his impressive art collection, a museum that would take its inspiration from the Renaissance and Baroque palaces and museums of Italy.  Construction began in 1928, and in October 1931, The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art was officially dedicated and opened to the public. 

Today, the Museum of Art displays European, American, and Asian works of art in its permanent collection galleries.  The collection of Old Master paintings, highlighted by the Baroque period of the 17th century, is among the finest in the country. 

The Museum’s collection continues to grow.  In 2002, the Koger Collection of Chinese ceramics, which spans over four millennia of Chinese ceramics, was donated to the Museum.  In 2006, Dr. Helga Wall-Apelt, made a combined pledge of her collection of Chinese jades, stone sculptures, and bronzes, along with generous funding to support the future Asian Galleries to be named in her honor.  With the opening of the Ulla R. and Arthur F. Searing Wing in 2007, an additional 30,000 square feet of exhibition space was added to the Museum.  The Ringling Museum also collects modern and contemporary art, and presents temporary exhibitions from its own collections and traveling collections in the Searing Wing.