Sarasota, FL.- The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art is pleased to present “The Amazing American Circus Poster: The Strobridge Lithographing Company”, on view at the museum from September 17th through January 29th 2012. Organized jointly by the Cincinnati Art Museum and the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, this exhibition showcases colorful exotic animals, amazing performers, delightful clowns, and more in 80 brilliantly, boldly bombastic lithographs. Celebrating the museum’s fascinating circus heritage and the unrivaled artistry of circus posters produced in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this spectacular collection presents one of America’s oldest forms of advertising and explores the impact of a medium that built national brand recognition and delivered new ideas, faraway places and exotic people directly to the hometowns of everyday Americans across the nation.
The circus spent more money for advertising than on any other component of its operation, and the circus poster was the most important part of its advertising effort. At the turn of the twentieth century, the arrival of the circus was an eagerly anticipated event. The poster was the basic marketing tool for circus entrepreneurs who were quick to take advantage of advances in color lithography. The threefold task of the poster was selling the circus, date, and feature available for a single day. Rural towns and cities were saturated with colorful bombastic lithographic images advertising the circus as it moved from coast to coast. Originally acquired by the Cincinnati Art Museum as historical documents, the circus posters bring back to life the golden years of this American form of entertainment at the birth of outdoor advertising. The circus advertising–from small posters showing clowns and bearded ladies, to immense billboards pasted on the sides of barns in which aerial feats and new technology exploded into the landscape—were the messengers and are now the record of the transformative world.
Strobridge’s custom designed posters delivered the rare and exotic, extremes of human and animal potential, new technologies, gender differences, animalized humans, and humanized animals, attractions that audiences were not likely to see anywhere else. At a time when museums were few and far between, the flamboyant Strobridge circus poster stands were museums without walls and the poster designs laid the groundwork for future generations of graphic designers. By the late nineteenth century, Cincinnati became the third largest printing center in the country. The forerunner company, E.C. Middleton, was formed in 1847. In 1854, Hines Strobridge joined the company and in 1867 the company became Strobridge & Company. In 1880, the company changed its name to the Strobridge Lithographing Company and decided to specialize in show printing for the circus and theater. By 1884, the business was so successful that the company moved to a larger printing plant on Canal, now Central Parkway in Cincinnati’s Over the Rhine. By the time of the Great Depression, demand for circus and theater posters diminished and the company turned to commercial billboard advertising. In the mind of circus aficionados, however, no printer’s work ever surpassed that of Strobridge Lithography Company of Cincinnati.
John Ringling, one of the five original circus kings of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, was blessed with entrepreneurial genius and through his success with the circus and other investments, became quite wealthy. In 1911, John (1866-1936) and his wife, Mable (1875-1929) purchased 20 acres of waterfront property in Sarasota, Florida. The couple’s first project in Sarasota was the splendid Venetian Gothic mansion Cà d’Zan, built between 1924 and 1926 for a then staggering sum of $1.5 million. In the spirit of America’s wealthiest Gilded Age industrialists, John Ringling gradually acquired a significant art collection, including paintings by Peter Paul Rubens, Velàzquez, Poussin, van Dyck and other Baroque masters, as well as rare antiquities from Cyprus. He built a palace for his treasures in a 21-gallery Museum of Art on his Sarasota property. The Florentine style building emulates the Uffizi Gallery and was specifically designed to house his collection of European paintings and art objects. The Ringlings had accumulated a treasure trove of objects, the result of many trips to Europe while searching for new circus acts. For years they acquired columns, architectural details and many fine art pieces. The result is a museum with a courtyard filled with bronze replicas of Greek and Roman sculpture, including a bronze cast of Michelangelo’s David.
John Ringling bequeathed his art collection, mansion and estate to the people of the State of Florida at the time of his death in 1936. By the late 1990s, the decay from deferred maintenance had reached a critical point. The Cà d’Zan mansion was falling apart, the roof of the Museum of Art leaked, and the building completed in 1957 to house the Historic Asolo Theater was condemned. The future of the Ringling Estate was uncertain. In 2000, Ringling’s original $1.2 million endowment had hardly grown to $2 million. Governance was transferred from the State of Florida’s Department of State to Florida State University establishing the Ringling estate as one of the largest museum/university complexes in the nation. As part of the University, the Museum has experienced a rebirth. In 2002, when $42.9 million was provided through the State for new buildings, it came with a condition that the Ringling board raise $50 million in endowment within five years. Impossible as the task then seemed, more than $55 million was donated or pledged by 2007. The transformation that culminated in 2007 restored all the existing buildings and expanded the Estate with four new buildings on the Museum’s Master Plan: the Tibbals Learning Center, the John M. McKay Visitors Pavilion – housing the Historic Asolo Theater, the Education/Conservation Building and the Ulla R. and Arthur F. Searing Wing. The Museum’s financial footing was also secured with the beginnings of a healthy endowment. Visit the museum’s website at … http://www.ringling.org
