Arts Adventure - A Day Trip To The Ringling Museum
December 13, 2007 at 11:34 a.m.
Arts Adventure - A Day Trip To The Ringling Museum
By Elise [email protected]
I entered the gleaming new reception area called the Visitors' Center where you obtain tickets, information, food, gifts, rest rooms and transportation around the grounds, if so desired. I was whisked away in a golf cart by a docent to the West Wing's newly created and vastly expanded gallery area called The Ulla R. and Albert Searing Wing. Here three spacious halls hung the Goya's etchings divided by theme and content. One of the shows curators walked with us pausing to explain and educate how the etchings related to Goya's historic context. Goya's times were similar to ours - they were tumultuous and troubled. The Spanish Inquisition, corruption in society, government and church were rampant. The Napoleonic Invasion of Spain was wrecking havoc and bankruptcy, and the Philosophy of Enlightenment was turning the status quo upside down. Morality was in total decline with prostitution and child abuse common. "Caprichos" translated means "caprices" and these small monotints delve into themes ignored by artists of Goya's times with an informality, frankness and depth of psychology that are totally modern. Goya was rendered deaf following an illness which placed him in isolation, from which came a sharper eye for the foibles of his times.
The Goya Caprichos are hung in tandem with two other shows, both of which are blockbusters. Clyde Butcher's Cuba hangs in an adjacent gallery. Here assembled are a dozen huge scaled black and white photographs showing a view of Cuba rarely seen, its rural countryside. These large landscapes surround with a sense of pristine mountains and unspoiled countryside. You get a sense of the wildness of the mountains and the simplicity of life on the farms, as well as the beauty of the land. A third adjacent gallery moves you from rural Cuba to the urban mind of the Cuban Avant-Garde, where bright colors and bold shapes abound.
The Caprichos of Goya, The Cuban Landscapes of Clyde Butcher, and the Avant-Garde Art of Cuba exemplify the new spirit of Integrated Art at Ringling museum. These three shows are tied together by their common Hispanic heritage. The viewer gets a look at past and present, experiences a variety of mediums and comes to a greater appreciation of each. The Integrated theme is carried across the street to the Asolo Theater, either Historic of Studio, where the chance may be that the work in performance may relate to the work in the galleries as well.
Museum fatigue overcame me after several hours, with its brain overload, and I chose to walk back to the Visitors' Center rather than ride the golf cart express. In the center, I checked out the new and larger two-story gift shop and coveted the educational toys for children and vowed to return for a Christmas shop. After buying some postcards of the "Old Ringling" painters, I peeked into the new restaurant Treviso, which was just setting up for lunch. The menu showed an upscale and tempting selection of Italian and more nouvelle standards with some very trendy cocktails of the martini persuasion. Prices weren't too bad, and had I a companion with me, I would have tried it. Being alone, I returned to my car and took a detour to Main St, where I lunched at the sidewalk café out side the Whole Foods Market. I enjoyed an Asian noodle salad from their take out deli with a bottle of green tea. I people-watched and called home on my cell phone and reported in on my wonderful Arts Adventure Day Trip.