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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Clyde Butcher

 

With visiting friends, we headed up to Sarasota.  Our first stop was a visit to the Marie Selby Botanical Garden's Historic Spanish Point campus, which currently exhibits large black and white photographs by Clyde Butcher.  He has been photographing the Everglades for more than three decades.

This driftwood photograph mesmerized me.

Revs Institute (Again)

 With friends in town -- and the male being a car guy -- we went to see the spectacular automobiles at Revs Institute in Naples.  Here is a small sampling of the more-than-100 vehicles in the Revs collection.

  This sleek automobile is a 1995 McLaren F1 ("the ultimate street car of the 20th century"),

 A blue 1914 Silver Ghost Colonial Rolls-Royce  ("the quality will remain long after the price is forgotten") reminds me that if you have to ask the price you can't afford it.

General Motors almost discontinued the LaSalle line until spotting a designer's plans for what became the 1934 LaSalle convertible coupe ("with new Art Deco features such as the tall, narrow front grill, pontoon fenders, biplane bumpers, portholes, chevrons, and chrome accents").