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About the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art
The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art is the legacy of circus entrepreneur and art collector John Ringling and his wife, Mable. The 66-acre estate on Sarasota bay includes the Museum of Art; the Venetian-Gothic Ca' d'Zan mansion, winter-residence of John and Mable; historic grounds and gardens; the 18th-century Historic Asolo Theater; and the Circus Museums, featuring the Wisconsin railroad car and the world's largest miniature circus at the Tibbals Learning Center.
John Ringling left his art collection and estate to the State of Florida. In 2000, the State transferred stewardship to Florida State University, establishing the Ringling Estate as one of the largest museum/university complexes in the country. Today, the Museum of Art displays European, American and Asian works. The Old Master paintings, among the rarest in the United States, are the most important of the Museum's holdings. It also features an extensive modern and contemporary collection.
You may visit the Museum’s website here.
XTechnical Aspects of the Collection
Digital Imaging
The images available in the Ringling Museum's Circus Herald Collection were part of a project to digitize, catalog, and provide optical character recognition (OCR) search capabilities for the heralds in the Museum’s collections.
Image file names are based on the object number assigned by the Circus Museum cataloger/ Registration Department. Digitization and processing of OCR were done by Backstage Library Works in 2008. The heralds were scanned at 400dpi. PDF files were made available for this PALMM project to provide optimum searchability and zoom capability in an appropriate file size.
Cataloging
Metadata for each image is pulled from a local database created by the staff of the Ringling Circus Museum. Dublin Core records for each image were created by Florida Center for Library Automation when the files were processed.
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Copyright Information for Collection
Access to and use of text and image files from the Heralds Collection are subject to the following terms of copyright, under the control of all state and federal copyright laws. Redistribution or commercial use is prohibited without express written permission. You may print (but not redistribute) images or information for non-commercial, personal or educational purposes only. The user assumes all risks of copyright infringement.
Reproduction requests may be submitted using the Rights and Reproduction request form, also accessible on the Museum website.
For any item used under fair use policy, we do ask that a credit line be included, citing the title or caption, the contributing repository, and item number. Sample credit line: U.S. Job Printing, American Barnum’s Museum, January 1, 1851, Ink on paper, 18 x 6 ½ inches, The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida.
The Museum has provided all known information regarding the creator or other entities associated with collection materials. The nature of historical archival collections means that copyright or other information about restrictions may be difficult to determine. We look forward to hearing from anyone who may have additional information regarding any image found in this online collection.
