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Exhibitions On Cuban, Spanish Themes Highlights Ringling Resurgence

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By KURT LOFT | The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 7, 2007

SARASOTA - Not so many years ago, a visit to the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art meant a day staring at a lot of arcane baroque paintings.

It also meant touring a museum in decay. By the 1990s, the place had aged into a bona fide anachronism, crumbling at the seams after eight decades under the Florida sun. Its historic Asolo Theater had been condemned, and Cà d'Zan, the Venetian gothic mansion where the Ringlings once lived, was closed for extensive repairs.

"It was like a garden that you never keep up, and the weeds take over," said Lynn Hobeck Bates, a museum spokeswoman.

Then, in 2000, Florida State University assumed governance of the stagnant, 66-acre complex, and over the course of six years and $76 million, the Ringling estate was modernized, doubled in size and revitalized. The new-and-improved museum and grounds meant new-and-improved exhibits and more power in brokering important touring shows.

The latest example of Ringling's fresh look is a trio of related exhibitions in the Ulla and Arthur Searing Wing, which opened earlier this year. It's a stately, 20,000-square-foot space adorned with bamboo and white oak floors. With so much additional room, the museum now can stage multiple shows that share a common theme.

Taking the spotlight is "Cuba Avant-Garde: Contemporary Cuban Art from the Faber Collection," featuring nearly 60 works by 42 Cuban-born artists.

About half still live in Cuba, while others make their homes in the United States, Mexico and Spain.

The group represents the shifts that have characterized Cuban art since the end of the former Soviet Union, about the time these artists began their ascension on the international market. The exhibit stands as testimony to Cuba's dramatic contribution to that market, and is both political and highly personal, said Stephen Borys, curator of collections at Ringling.

"Politics doesn't drive the show," he said, "but it does play a part in how these artists think."

That thinking comes to life through paintings, drawings, photographs, sculptures and mixed media. Some of the more prominent names include Elsa Mora, Jose Bedia, Tania Bruguera and Luis Cruz Azaceta.

Complementing the Cuba retrospective is "Francisco Goya: Los Caprichos," a suite of 80 aquatint etchings by the groundbreaking Spanish master, who lived from 1746 to 1828. Although Goya was a well-respected court painter, his art turned increasingly inward and sardonic after an illness left him completely deaf.

In this large, first-edition series, Goya addresses everything from superstitions to social abuses, often with blistering wit and insight, said Alexandria Libby, the museum's assistant curator of European art. She calls the series a precursor to the modern movement in art.

Published in 1799, "Los Caprichos" reflects a time of social, religious and economic crisis in Spain. Goya attacks the ruling class and its lack of reason, and no person or sacred subject escapes his subversive point of view, be it a prostitute or a Catholic priest.

Goya described his ambitious series of etchings as "the innumerable foibles and follies to be found in any civilized society, and from the common prejudices and deceitful practices which custom, ignorance, or self-interest have made usual."

The third leg of Ringling's Spanish theme is "Clyde Butcher's Cuba," a dozen large black-and-white landscapes by the critically acclaimed Florida photographer. Butcher, who lives in Venice, is known for capturing untouched areas of tropical and subtropical landscape, and he made three trips to Cuba in 2002 and 2003. His images focus on Cuba's Sierra Maestra Mountains, the scenic south coast and the Mogote hills of the west. Butcher will discuss his work during a public talk at the gallery at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday.

ON VIEW

Cuba Avant-Garde

Francisco Goya: Los Caprichos

Clyde Butcher's Cuba

WHAT: Three related exhibits in Ringling's Searing Wing

WHEN: "Cuba Avant-Garde" continues through Dec. 30, "Goya" through Jan. 6 and "Butcher" through Jan. 10. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. daily.

WHERE: Ringling Museum of Art, 5401 Bay Shore Road, Sarasota

HOW MUCH: $19; $6 for students with ID; free for children 5 and younger; tickets to the Butcher lecture are $25; (941) 359-5700

Reporter Kurt Loft can be reached at (813) 259-7570 or kloft@tampatrib.com.

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