SELECTED CATALOGUES & ESSAYS


Modern Art in Florida, 1948–1970 / Mark Ormond


Florida: A Place of Discovery, Development, Dreams and Art

After the Civil War, the decades of the late nineteenth century witnessed the emergence of investors,developers and visionaries who saw opportunity in the swamps, wetlands and hundreds of thousands of acres of Florida palmettos, pines and oaks. [1] Any serious interest in art and the subsequent institutions to support it, however, did not occur until a few forward-thinking individuals began to create the infrastructures of cities.

Florida was considered an exotic place at the turn of the twentieth century. Long before the existence of highways and airports, most settlers and visitors to Florida came by way of railroad or ship. Henry Flagler's rail system, in particular, provided quick transport from the eastern seaboard to his hotels in St. Augustine, Palm Beach, Miami and eventually Key West in 1912.

After the First World War ended in 1917, a generation who previously had sought refuge in the resorts of Europe was now lured to Florida.The state was marketed as a place where one could escape, where one could find sun and relaxation, and where one could live a "fantasy" of another culture. This approach established a precedent that continues to this day. Florida was, and still is, a destination sought after by individuals who are often looking to re-discover or reclaim themselves in a climate that they believe holds restorative powers. [2]

People came to Florida for many reasons and as a result cities grew, with most towns experiencing serious growth in the 1920s despite the decade's economic downturns in real estate and the stock market. Some individuals who had an interest in art decided that it should play a prominent role in the place they now called home. In seaports and fishing villages, these individuals established art centers, schools, associations, clubs and museums that would encourage and promote art.

A renewed interest in living in Florida occurred in the 1940s. This major wave of development and rapid change took place partly because many of the service-men who had spent some time in Florida during the Second World War wanted to share that experience with their brides and children. Others looked to the South as an ideal retreat for vacation and later retirement. Of course there were those who had discovered Florida before the war who likewise wanted to make a visible commitment to the culture of their newly adopted city or town.

During this same post war period, New York saw a transition in its art world. A new migration of individuals who had discovered the dynamism of the city just before, during, and now after the war was assuming key roles in the development of art. In the 1940s New York was a place of exciting experimentation in painting: the art that was generated became known as abstract expressionism. Similarly, in the sixties, Pop art asserted itself in New York and internationally. Artists, curators, and collectors who traveled between Florida and New York and elsewhere in the following three decades, as well as works of art themselves, enabled the citizens of Tampa Bay to enjoy a rich diet of new forms of expression and contemporary ideas. - M.O.



Modern Art in Florida 1948–1970
A Climate for Contemporary–Tampa Bay

During most of the twentieth century, art in Florida was about individuals. While some began their own institutions and others skillfully directed them, each establishment was marked by the leadership and vision of its personalities. A committed vision created a strong foundation for community support. Art and artists became the primary focus and thus played a large role in the community's cultural life. It was only later that art (or visual art as it would be called after the 1960's) would have to compete with other disciplines like theatre and music.

The first museum that gave serious attention to modern art was established on the East Coast of Florida in West Palm Beach. The Norton Gallery of Art enjoyed the finest and most comprehensive collection of art during the first five decades of the twentieth century. Ralph Norton and his wife Elizabeth had come to West Palm Beach in 1939 to retire. They brought with them their outstanding collection of art and decided to share it with the public. They hired the local firm of Wyeth, King and Johnson to design the museum, which opened its doors to the public in February 1941. The Nortons had collected modern works that gave them great aesthetic pleasure. Elizabeth Calhoun NortonÕs gifts to the museum upon her death in 1947 included work by Georges Rouault and Georges Braque. When Ralph Norton died at the age of 78, in 1953, the collection exceeded 500 objects including examples by Constantin Brancusi (fig. 3), Marc Chagall, Paul Klee, Henri Matisse, Joan Miro and Pablo Picasso. The Norton Gallery of Art became a model for other Florida museums to follow, and in the sixties, was particularly generous in allowing important works from its collection to travel to Tampa Bay institutions.

Another key factor in the development of modern art in Florida was the introduction of innovative styles of art to the region. Abstract expressionism had become the dominant form of art in New York and elsewhere during the late forties and early fifties. New York was the locus of the development of abstract expressionism because so many artists had gravitated there before, during, and after the war. This fact, combined with the impetus and excitement to claim something as uniquely American after the war as well as the rich ferment of ideas and explosive energy generated by artists from all over the country and abroad, fostered new directions in painting.

Florida's connections to the abstract expressionist movement and to color field painting, collage, Pop and Op art were well apparent. Art centers and museums championed the work and, by the end of the sixties, the importance of modern art was well established in schools, institutions and communities throughout Florida and particularly in Tampa Bay. The tradition of the figure continued to interest many artists and the combination of this subject matter and new approaches to making art can be seen in much of the work produced by artists who lived all or part of the year in Florida.

Tampa
Although Tampa was a few decades behind the East Coast of Florida in establishing an art museum, the desire to do so was evident from the start in the minds of those who understood the importance of art. Their hope and aspiration guaranteed the inevitability of an important art museum in Tampa. Visionary leaders were needed to establish not only the city but also the economic climate that would support a cultural life.

Henry Bradley Plant, founder of an empire of railroads, steamships and hotels, was a significant figure in the early history and development of Tampa Bay. [3] At foreclosure sales in 1879 and 1880, Plant purchased the Atlantic & Gulf Railroad and the Charleston & Savannah Railroad. With these as a nucleus he began building a transportation system along the southern Atlantic seaboard that twenty years later included fourteen railway companies with 2,100 miles of track, several steamship lines, and a number of important hotels in Ocala, Winter Park, Belleair, Punta Gorda and Fort Myers. [4] Plant established the infrastructure for mobility in the area and set a standard of luxury for leisure time activities that attracted those who could afford to indulge themselves.

Citizens of Tampa became interested in establishing a museum of art at the turn of the twentieth century. The first group, the Students Art Club of Tampa, was organized in May 1902 and celebrated its golden anniversary in 1951. The motto of the club was "art enters into everything and brightens every feature of practical life." [5] The club met at 809 Horatio Street. Its constitution declared "its object shall be first, to encourage and promote the study and appreciation of arts in all its forms, among its members, in civic life and in the public schools." Another section said "to cooperate with other art organizations in arousing public sentiment to the end that a public museum of art, representative of all Florida may be established." [6]

In Tampa, as elsewhere in Florida, the teens and twenties saw grandiose plans outlined. Some came to fruition while others became victims of several land boom busts and the Depression of 1929. On Saturday, March 13, 1926, the Tampa Morning Telegraph announced that Tampa was "to get a $25 million dollar replica of the Taj Mahal" as part of the Persian Gardens development. This architectural replica was to house the library for the art colony that was envisioned. [7]

Tampa Art Institute / Tampa Bay Art Center / Tampa Museum of Art Although the Taj Mahal never came to fruition, one organization begun in the twenties that actually did survive was The Tampa Art Institute. It was founded in 1923 and received its charter to operate as a non-profit in 1929. In 1967 it became the Tampa Bay Art Center, and later, the Tampa Museum of Art. On April 20, 1947, Tampa Tribune Staff Writer, Ione Simmons reported that the "GI Bill of Rights may bring about the realization ofÉa permanent museum of art here." The federal government had approved the Tampa Art Institute as a school for GI's. The Art Institute's Director Mrs. Mamye Sellers Leonetti was quoted as saying that 60 veterans in the area had expressed an interest to study. This meant $1, 200 per month would go to the Institute. Mrs. Leonetti planned to set aside 25% of this for the establishment of a modern art museum.

The Tampa Sunday Tribune of May 3, 1953, reported that "developing community interest in art is the purpose" of the Tampa Art Institute. It had a membership of 200 with a goal of 500 that year. The Art Institute maintained a small library, provided art classes in the government building of the University of Tampa, and held bi-monthly exhibitions October through June. In 1953 it offered thirteen exhibitions. It was also a frequent host of group exhibitions held by an important statewide organization, called the Florida Artists Group, Inc., that was formed in 1949 to show the work of talented artists throughout the State of Florida.

On September 30, 1956, Hazel Bowman, Tampa Tribune Art Editor, announced that the Tampa Art Institute would move into a new gallery space at 320 North Boulevard. The architect for the remodeling was Mark Hampton, president of the Tampa Art Institute. The sketch for the new gallery depicted a clean open space that was flexible and modern.

Modern art continued to challenge Tampa citizens throughout the fifties. Yet determined individuals supported the positions and accomplishments of artists. A particularly heated exchange followed a display of abstract art at the Florida State Fair Exhibition in 1958. The Tampa Morning Tribune of March 14th printed both positive and negative letters to the editor as well as interviews with area artists promoting the importance of new art forms.

Russell B. Hicken served as the first full time director of the Tampa Art Institute from 1963–66. On September 4th, 1965, the Tampa Tribune reported that the Tampa Art Institute was looking to establish a permanent museum. It also announced the opening of the Tampa Junior Museum, which had been founded earlier in 1958, in new quarters at 320 North Boulevard, the same location as the Tampa Art Institute. [8]

In 1965 the Art Institute hosted an exhibition of work by Balcomb Greene, the subject of an earlier retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1961. [9] Greene had been the organizer of the American Abstract Artists in 1936 and "became a major spokesperson for the group. Its four dozen members constituted virtually the entire avant-garde of the thirties." [10] In 1942, the artist turned from geometric abstraction to figuration, as illustrated by The Tampa Museum of Art's painting Figure by the Sea, 1960–61 (fig. 4, cat. no. 29).

Financial challenges forced the Tampa Art Institute to close in December 1966. [11] The organization was absorbed by the University of Tampa and re-opened in 1967 as the Tampa Bay Art Center, the art gallery of the University. In August 1967, Jan von Adlmann moved from Colorado to become its first director (1967–69). [12] During his tenure Von Adlmann suggested the establishment of a permanent collecting museum in Tampa that would focus on art of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. [13]

Von Adlmann kept the community focused on the present; the press embraced that commitment as well. "Modern Art Out – Ôpost modernÕ in" was the headline of an article penned by Charles Benbow for the St. Petersburg Times on September 25, 1967. This statement was the pronouncement of the thirty-two-year-old Henry Geldzahler, Curator of the Department of Contemporary Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Geldzahler had been a juror for the Florida State Fair Exhibition held at the Tampa Art Institute [14] in 1966, as well as the United States Commissioner for the Venice Biennale that same year.

Together with Karl Nickel, a curator at the Ringling Museum of Art, Von Adlmann traveled to California and organized the successful exhibition 40 Now California Painters that was seen first in Tampa and a month later in Sarasota. [15] The exhibition included works by Richard Diebenkorn, Stanton MacDonald-Wright, Lee Mullican and David Park, among others. The April 16, 1968 metropolitan edition of the Tampa Tribune featured a review of the exhibition by Henry Hopkins, past Curator of Exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and then Director of the Fort Worth Art Center.

It appears that the Tampa Bay Art Center and the University of Tampa negotiated their relationship annually until 1974 when the City of Tampa requested that the Arts Council of Tampa/Hillsborough County develop a plan for reestablishing an art museum for the city. The Arts Council consulted with community arts organizations for a building to be funded from a bond issue. In 1975 a plan was approved and a private/public partnership called the Tampa Museums Federation was formed. The present Tampa Museum of Art was born of this partnership and opened on its current site in 1979.

University of Tampa / University of South Florida
Every city depends on the strength of its academic faculty to develop and nurture not only its student population but also that of the community. Therefore it is not surprising that the University of Tampa (UT) and the University of South Florida (USF) each became a nexus for art to be seen and for ideas to be communicated and shared with the community. The University of Tampa began in 1931 as a private university while the state-supported University of South Florida opened in 1960.

In 1960, Joseph Testa-Secca, a 1950 graduate of the University of Tampa who had received his Masters Degree from the University of Georgia in 1956, joined the Art Department at the University of Tampa. Among his achievements was a mural he planned in 1960 for the Science Building on USFÕs campus, a building designed by architect and former president of the Tampa Art Institute, Mark Hampton. In 1964 Testa-Secca's work was exhibited in the Florida pavilion of the New York World's Fair. The year before, he and Harold Nosti, another artist who had also begun teaching at UT in 1960, promoted the idea of a campus gallery to Charles and Avis La Monte, who provided its funding. UT's La Monte Gallery, likewise designed by Mark Hampton, provided another venue for exhibitions in Tampa. [16]

A Plant City, Florida, native and a graduate of the University of Florida with an MFA in 1953, Harrison Covington moved to Tampa to become the founding chairman of the University of South Florida's Art Department and served in that capacity from 1961 to 1967. As a painter Covington was "intensely interested in the reality of painting…its surface, material and texture." [17] He traveled to New York in the early fifties where he saw the work of the abstract expressionists. His painting Man in Landscape was included in 1962 in the Museum of Modern ArtÕs exhibition Painting USA: the Figure. [18]

During the sixties the University of South Florida hired an impressive group of individuals to teach art and art history, including Alan Eaker, Ernest Cox, Charles Fager, Robert Gelinas (fig. 5, cat. no. 27), Jeffrey Kronsnoble, Mernet Larsen (fig. 6, cat. no. 42), Bruce Marsh, Bradley Nickels, George Pappas, Donald Saff and Theo Wujcik. It also began showcasing contemporary art in galleries throughout the university. Jim Camp, who had a particular interest in pre-Columbian art, directed the USF Galleries from 1961 until August 1968, when he became Director of the Florida Center for the Arts; Jon W. Kowalek succeeded him. (The Florida Center for the Arts was a unit within USF's Division of Fine Arts. The program reflected the desire of the university to use its resources for the broadest possible educational and cultural advantages.) Already in 1959 USF had made the important decision to begin collecting art; its first acquisition was Syd Solomon's Cascade, 1959 (fig. 7, cat. no. 83). [19]

USF's Library and Theatre Galleries hosted a lively series of exhibitions beginning in 1961 with Joe Testa-Secca's work. In 1962 the galleries showed Sarasota artists in an exhibition that was organized by the staff of the Ringling Museum of Art and which included the work of John Armstrong, Beth Arthur, Jon Corbino, Gabriel Kohn, Robert Larsen, Hilton Leech, Elden Rowland, Craig Rubadoux, Syd Solomon, Vernon Voelz and Loran Wilford. In 1963 the schedule featured William Pachner, Craig Rubadoux and contemporary paintings from India. 1964 saw exhibitions of Leonard Baskin prints and the work of Harrison Covington. In 1965 Gabriel Kohn exhibited sculpture, lithographs and collages. In addition there were exhibitions of the work of Frank Rampolla, Carol Summers, Syd Solomon, Vernon Voelz, Jerry Uelsmann, Jeffrey Kronsnoble and Josef Albers. In 1966 Karl Zerbe, Robert Motherwell and Ernest Cox had exhibitions. Donald Saff displayed prints, Afro Basaldella showed paintings and an exhibition of Georges Rouault's complete Miserere series was featured. There was also an exhibition of Paul Klee prints. In 1967, USF hosted the 1967 Corcoran Biennial, an exhibition of twenty-one artists that was circulated by the American Federation for the Arts. The galleries' schedule also included one-person shows by Jeffrey Kronsnoble, Robert Rauschenberg, Ernest Cox, Harrison Covington and George Pappas. In 1968 Robert Huff, Mernet Larsen and Bruce Marsh showed new work. Exhibitions of Philip Pearlstein's work, as well as that of Allen Jones, Alan Eaker and Jim Dine, were held in 1969. Selections from the private collection of New Yorker Richard Brown Baker were also shown that year. Baker's collection included important works by Gene Davis, Hans Hofmann, Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist and Andy Warhol. The schedule of 1970 included work by Joan Miro, Frank Rampolla, Mel Ramos, Nicholas Krushenick and Richard Anuzkiewicz.

Graphicstudio
The Graphicstudio program at the University of South Florida encouraged experimentation by artists from all over the country. Donald Saff, an artist, teacher and administrator who wanted to vitalize the art community in Tampa, founded it in 1968 (fig. 10, cat. no. 79). Saff missed the energy and visual resources of New York. Under his leadership "a yeasty environment was created and maintained for seven years, and the process was as much a part of the goal of all involved as the product." [20]

Saff exercised the University's mandate to "explore new areas through research that will contribute in a substantive way to knowledge." [21] He wanted to invite artists with international reputations to the University and hoped that the faculty would support the program since it would benefit students to meet artists while they were in residence. Saff felt the students could learn through observation about the "practical and aesthetic problems in contemporary printmaking" [22] while the community could subscribe to the print projects. The program would enhance the reputation of the University and would contribute to knowledge about printmaking. USF would also build a collection of prints it could not otherwise afford, which in turn, could be used as teaching devices through its Art Bank Program through the Florida Center for the Arts.

In the program's early years, Saff had the important support of Harrison Covington, USF's Associate Dean and later Dean of the College of Fine Art. James Camp, Director of the Florida Center for the Arts, also helped by securing a funding grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Saff also had to raise considerable money from the private sector since the resources of the State and University were limited. Ann and James Ross became the first subscribers to the program and encouraged many others to join as well. [23]

One component of the program that has proven of extraordinary value was SaffÕs insistence on a "complete documentary record covering procedures and processes." [24] The dedication and interest of the staff impressed the visiting artists, who marveled at the efficiency of the small workshop overseen by master printers Charles Ringness and Theo Wujcik. Wujcik's extraordinary skill and versatility are evident in his work Skeleton 8 Mallard, 1963 (cat. no. 91).

Alan Eaker, a sculptor on the University faculty who worked with James Rosenquist on his "Cold Light" series (fig. 26, cat. no. 75), remarked that no "dollar value" could be placed on some of what was produced. [25] Graphicstudio was a success because individuals came together to support a vision of what could be. Members of the community supported it while artists enjoyed the freedom and support to experiment and make new work.

Each artist had his own approach to the experiment so Graphicstudio's staff was challenged differently by each visitor to the program: Charles Hinman wanted to replicate his sketches, Ed Ruscha's project was related to his book projects, Mel Ramos' experiment introduced photographic techniques, and Richard Smith wanted to avoid a flat surface by creating a work that involved folded and cut paper (cat. no. 82).

Donald Saff's invitation to James Rosenquist, Robert Rauschenberg, Philip Pearlstein, and others to work at the studio changed not only the profile of the program, but also alerted the world to what was transpiring in Tampa. [26] Saff said, "There was no fixed form to what Rauschenberg was then doing. He would move from one conception to another so that a superficially simple process of improvisation resulted in an amazingly sustained metamorphosis of visual ideas and literal images." [27] Rauschenberg's innovations included printing on waterproof paper and printing oxide decals that would later be fired into clay with the help of Alan Eaker. Rauschenberg's use of clay was an innovation in itself (fig. 9, cat. no. 71). "They took dirt and made it into high art." [28] Rauschenberg chose to use the burlap bags that the clay had been shipped in for the fifth and final object (fig. 8, cat. no. 72). Similarly, Philip Pearlstein's project (fig. 25, cat. no. 62), printed in 1969, attracted the attention of numerous individuals in New York, including Jacqueline Chambord of Feigen Gallery, Marian Goodman of Multiples, Inc., and Paul Cornwall-Jones of Petersburg Press.

St. Petersburg
Margaret Acheson Stuart dreamed of building a Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg. Planning for it began in 1961 and the museum opened in 1965. From the start the museum had a diverse exhibition program that included much contemporary art. William Pachner's View of My Birthplace, 1958 (fig. 11, cat. no. 57) was exhibited in the museumÕs inaugural exhibition that included examples of American paintings by John Singleton Copley to the then present. Although not yet open to the public, the museum had received as early as 1963 a Carroll Cloar painting from the Childe Hassam Fund of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 1964, an exhibition of 150 photographs that was being planned for 1965 was announced. This exhibition ultimately included works by Richard Avedon, Andreas Feininger (fig. 2, cat. no 26), Philippe Halsman (figs. 12 & 14, cat. nos. 32 & 31), Yousuf Karsh and Arthur Rothstein (fig. 13, cat. no. 76).

Rexford Stead, director from 1963–67, expressed the purpose of the museum as "to increase and diffuse knowledge and appreciation of art." [29] His exhibition program was global in its perspective. In discussing upcoming shows in the Spring 1967 newsletter to the museum's 4000 members, he mentioned an exhibition of American Painting of the Forties that included Milton Avery, Edward Hopper, Thomas Hart Benton, Philip Evergood, Charles Burchfield, Andrew Wyeth, Walt Kuhn and John Marin as well as an American Federation of Arts (AFA) show of Australian paintings made between 1964–66. He also cited forthcoming shows of Picasso's ceramics, of decorative arts featuring contemporary Argentinian rugs, and of modern Chinese landscape paintings. Stead also acknowledged that "photography, for example, is now most clearly an important branch of the fine arts." [30] Lee Malone became the Museum's second director in 1967 and continued Stead's approach to a diverse exhibition program.

Around this time, businesses in St. Petersburg began to appreciate modern art as well. In 1968 Syd Solomon completed a commission for Nelson Poynter for a work that was to hang in the building occupied by the Evening Independent, a newspaper that was owned by the St. Petersburg Times. [31] This commission represented an example for others to follow. The Arts Center Association, Inc., now known as The Arts Center, was incorporated in St. Petersburg in 1964. It joined together two distinct groups of artists: the Arts Club which had been formed in 1916 by a group of women who enjoyed watercolor painting and another group that had been formed in the fifties and consisted of individuals who were looking for a place to meet, exhibit their work and share ideas. [32] Then, as now, it is a vital asset to the St. Petersburg community.

In 1965 Bruce Marsh moved from California to teach at St. Petersburg Junior College. Upon his arrival Marsh's painting style demonstrated his affinity for the figure and his interest in Richard Diebenkorn, Elmer Bischoff and his teacher Nathan Oliveira. He began a study of color and structure and produced a series of paintings which included a grid and were focused on multiple events and different planes in space. Sea Palm, Red Shift, 1968 (fig. 15, cat. no. 48) is from this series. In 1969, Donald Saff invited Marsh to join the faculty at USF, Tampa. [33]

Belleair and Clearwater
On Sunday, April 2, 1950, The Tampa Tribune announced the establishment of the Florida Gulf Coast Art Center in Belleair. The center began as a group of buildings consisting of modern studios, dormitories, galleries and lecture halls that were constructed on the property of its founder, Mrs. Shillard Smith.

Also in 1950, the adjacent town of Clearwater gained a European perspective with the arrival of William Pachner. Pachner had moved to the United States from Czechoslovakia in 1939 hoping to work for New York's Esquire magazine. Upon learning that he had lost his entire family during the Holocaust – 80 relatives that he had left behind [34] – he decided to become a full-time painter, and in 1946, purchased the Woodstock (Vermont) home of Juliana Force, then Director of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Pachner's first one-man show was held at the Weyhe Gallery in New York in 1948. In 1950, Mrs. Smith, founder of the Florida Gulf Coast Art Center, invited Pachner to Clearwater to teach painting.

Pachner had gone to museums in New York during the late forties to study the work of Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, and Georges Rouault. [35] When he became Curator of the Art Program at the Gulf Coast Art Center in 1953 he organized Florida's first exhibition of Picasso's work. [36] Pachner was the subject of a one person show at the Sarasota Art Center in 1954. In 1957 he left the Gulf Coast Art Center to open his own school of art in Clearwater and to teach at the Tampa Art Institute. That same year his work was circulated by the American Federation of Arts (AFA) in an exhibition entitled Four Florida Painters, and in 1959, he was the subject of a retrospective organized by the AFA with an accompanying monograph with an essay by Kenneth Donahue, director of the Ringling Museum of Art.

Sarasota
Mrs. Potter Palmer [37] of Chicago, Paris and London was one of the first wealthy individuals to invest in Sarasota, a city that was incorporated in 1902, the same year her husband died. She purchased a large portion of what is now Sarasota County for real estate development, citrus groves and cattle ranching. She also built a winter home at Osprey Point on waterfront property that had been settled as a homestead by the Webb family in 1867. It is not clear how much of her Impressionist art collection she hung in her Florida cottage compared with what could be seen in her homes in Chicago, Paris and London. [38]

Sarasota was a small town when the Ringling brothers, Charles and John, began investing in its real estate. The first President of the City's Chamber of Commerce, John Ringling purchased land in 1911 from one of his circus managers and decided in the early twenties to replace a wooden house with something grander. Dwight James Baum designed a winter home for him that was Mediterranean revival in style and completed in 1926.

Ringling's vision for his 37 acres of bayfront included an art museum and a school of art. During the construction of his winter home, Ringling hired John Phillips, who was working on his neighbor Ralph Caples' property, to design a Roman villa-style museum. Ringling, who also had an apartment in New York, was clearly interested in a building that could be compared to a major metropolitan museum. Together with Julius Böhler, a German dealer from Munich who became his friend, advisor and curator, he purchased over six hundred paintings mostly between the years 1925 and 1929, the year his wife Mable died. Although he collected a few paintings by artists who were still living when he purchased them, [39] his primary interests were in the Baroque masters of Italy and the Netherlands.

Ringling's school of art was started in 1930 as a collaboration with Florida Southern College in a building twenty-seven blocks south of the museum. Although Ringling assisted with its financing for a few years only, it continues to bear his name today: the Ringling School of Art & Design.

In 1931 both Frank Rampolla and Hilton Leech came to Sarasota to teach at the Ringling School. Once there Leech met Dorothy Sherman, also a painter, and they married. He left the Ringling School during World War II and started his own school, the Hilton Leech Art School, first in Amagansett, Long Island, New York and later in Sarasota. Leech was active in the Sarasota Art Association, the Art League of Manatee County and the Florida Artist Group, and his watercolors (fig. 17, cat. no. 44) were widely exhibited throughout Tampa Bay and elsewhere.

In the late thirties, Jerry Farnsworth and Helen Sawyer arrived on Siesta Key, a barrier island off the coast of Sarasota, and established a school where they taught several generations of artists before closing it in the early seventies. An art colony soon developed in Sarasota that would include Hilton and Dorothy Leech, Robert Chase, Elden Rowland, John Armstrong, William and Martha Hartman, Manierre Dawson, Ben Stahl and Jon Corbino.

John Ringling died in December 1936, but his estate was not settled for 10 years and a director for the now state-owned facility was not hired until 1947. Everett "Chick" Austin, who had transformed Hartford's Wadsworth Athenaeum into a destination for New Yorkers while only in his twenties, immediately began balancing the Ringling Museum's exhibition program with modern exhibitions.

Around the same time Katherine and Elden Rowland left Cincinnati, Ohio, and moved to Tampa and then to Sarasota in 1947. They built a house on Siesta Key in 1948. Elden had already studied with Jerry Farnsworth in Cape Cod and now worked with him on Siesta Key. Katherine remembers that "the painters were the art community." [40] In 1956 Elden started organizing exhibitions of work by Florida artists which he traveled throughout the country, including to the Tampa Art Institute. Rowland's work was inspired by the natural beauty of the region (fig. 16, cat. no. 77). His painting Sign in Vairocana, 1970 (cat. no. 78) was shown at the Wadsworth Athenaeum the same year it was painted.

After World War II, veterans who had trained in Florida or traveled there to recuperate decided to remain or return to the state. Some veterans were artists and the GI Bill was an important opportunity for them to begin or continue their education. Syd Solomon came to Florida after the war and decided to settle in Sarasota in 1946 and to use the benefits of the GI Bill to enroll at the Ringling School of Art. [41] Solomon had trained before the war at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and immediately following it, at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. By the mid-fifties he had a great following of his own students and was experimenting in new media, particularly acrylic paints. His abstract paintings were some of the first contemporary paintings collected by museums in Tampa Bay (cat. nos. 83 & 84).

St. Petersburg native David Budd began attending the Ringling School in 1948 to study interior design. He moved to New York in 1952, at Syd Solomon's suggestion, and established himself in New York's lower eastside where he met Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline. Soon Budd was spending summers in East Hampton, a small town near the eastern end of Long Island, and invited Syd and Annie Solomon to visit in 1955. From 1959 on, the Solomons spent every summer in East Hampton. They first rented a gatehouse and studio at The Creeks, Alfonso Ossorio's 60-acre estate, and later built a home. [42]

Budd's first paintings in 1954 were influenced by the work of his new friend, Jackson Pollock. Budd painted on masonite with powerful gestures that took paint beyond the panel's edge. He had his first show at Betty Parsons Gallery in New York in 1958. His painting "lead-off," 1958 (fig. 18, cat. no. 8) was included in that exhibition. Artists first became attracted to East Hampton in the 1870's. Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Winslow Homer, J. Alden Weir and John Twachtman were some of the first to stay in boarding houses there. Thomas Moran built a studio-home in 1880. In the 1950s this tradition continued. Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, Elaine and Willem de Kooning, Balcomb and Gertrude Greene, Charlotte and James Brooks, Conrad and Anita Marca-Relli, and Adolph Gottlieb, all resided there at some time. Guild Hall, first an art center then a museum, had opened in East Hampton in 1931 and was showing artists of the region. It did not seriously begin to collect art, however, until after air-conditioning was installed in 1970. [43] The Solomons continued to live in Sarasota in the winter months. In the late fifties Syd was asked to be in-charge of the visiting artists program at New College, then being established. Alfred Barr who had been the Director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and was a trustee of New College encouraged Solomon who, in turn, invited James Brooks, Balcomb Greene, Conrad Marca-Relli, Philip Guston and Larry Rivers to participate in the program. Guston lived on Siesta Key in Sarasota for three winters in the early sixties.

In April of 1955, the Ringling Museum of Art opened the exhibition Fifty Florida Painters. It was the first exhibition of its kind to be held in the state. Allan McNab, director of the Lowe Museum; Willis Woods, director of the Norton Gallery of Art; William Pachner, director of the Florida Gulf Coast Art Center; Stuart Purser, Art Department Head, University of Florida, Gainesville; and Adolph Carl of Florida State University nominated artists to be included. Each artist then selected his or her own work to be featured in the show. The artists ranged in age from 25 to 60. The fact that only eight of the participants had been born in Florida demonstrates that the state was drawing artists in great numbers. Among the many artists included were: Jack Cartlidge, Harrison Covington, Jerry Farnsworth, Dorothy Sherman Leech, Hilton Leech, Helen Sawyer and Syd Solomon. From 1955 onward, the Ringling hosted annual or biannual exhibitions of work by artists living in the State, and thus recognized the contributions of its citizen artists.

Beginning with his exhibition Masterpieces of Modern Painting in 1948, Ringling Museum of Art Director Chick Austin inaugurated a decade-long series of exhibitions that included Cuban painters (1952), Marsden Hartley (1953), Pablo Picasso (1956) and Marino Marini (1957). Kenneth Donahue, director from 1957Ð64, continued the presentation of modern art with exhibitions of artists from Sidney Janis (1961) and Kootz Galleries (1962). Exhibitions of paintings by René Magritte and Yves Tanguy from the Museum of Modern ArtÕs collection were scheduled in 1961. In 1962 the Ringling Museum acquired its first painting by a living artist: Syd Solomon's Silent World, 1961 (fig. 24, cat. no. 84).

Commercial galleries also helped promote modern art and ideas to Tampa Bay audiences. Murray Lebwohl opened his gallery in Sarasota in 1958, showing the work of Syd Solomon, Conrad Marca-Relli, William Pachner, Frank Rampolla, Joseph Testa-Secca and Craig Rubadoux. The Chicago dealer Frank Oehlshlaeger opened a gallery on St. Armand's Circle in 1962 with the encouragement of one of his artists, nationally known painter Jon Corbino. Corbino had first come to Sarasota in 1956 to visit Jerry Farnsworth and Helen Sawyer, his friends from Cape Cod. [44] Jon Corbino's Preliminary Study for the Centurion, 1950 (fig. 21, cat. no. 11) was exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American ArtÕs Annual Exhibition in 1952. [45]

In 1965 the Ringling Museum held a one-person exhibition of Frank Rampolla's work, and in 1966, opened a new wing for the display of modern art. A Friends of Modern Art group had already been formed to raise funds for acquisitions. Some of its accomplishments were commissioning a cast of Gaston Lachaise's Elevation (fig. 19, cat. no. 41) and purchasing a mobile by Alexander Calder (fig. 20, cat. no. 10).

A significant exhibition of treasures from the Norton Gallery of Art that included Pablo Picasso's cubist bronze Head of a Woman (1909), Constantin Brancusi's 1925 polished brass Mademoiselle Pogany II (fig. 3) and Paul Klee's Old Married Couple (1931), a work of tempera on burlap, was held at the Ringling Museum in 1966. The Klee painting had previously been exhibited at the Manatee Art League in Bradenton in 1962.

In 1967 the Ringling Museum organized an important exhibition of the work of Manierre Dawson, an artist who had exhibited in The New York Armory Show in 1913 and had retired to Florida in 1949. This exhibition traveled to the Norton Gallery in Palm Beach and both the Ringling and the Norton subsequently acquired works by Dawson for their collections (figs. 22 & 1, cat. nos. 19 & 18). The year 1967 also saw an exhibition of Latin American painters and an exhibition of Jerry Uelsmann's photographs. In 1968, the Ringling Museum hosted the University of South Florida Faculty Show as well as Forty California Painters. The following year seventeen artists from the Washington, D. C. area were shown.

By 1968, it appeared that the Tampa Bay area was positioned to move rapidly forward, both as a significant venue for the display of modern art and as a vital place for artists to live and work. The late sixties saw artists spending more time in Tampa making art, particularly James Rosenquist and Robert Rauschenberg. Rosenquist would soon call the little town of Aripeka, just north of Tampa, home and in 1970, Rauschenberg would begin painting full-time in his studio in Captiva, near Fort Myers. The decades of the seventies and the eighties would bring another wave of artists to Florida.

In Tampa, St. Petersburg, Clearwater and Sarasota the enthusiasm for modern art was strong. Then, as now, the climate for contemporary was optimum and the future looked bright.


Endnotes:

1 The territories of east and west Florida were admitted to Statehood in 1845.

2 The Spaniard Ponce de Leon named the landmass "Pascua de Florida" after he discovered it while looking for a "garden of youth" in 1513.

3 Plant opened the Tampa Bay Hotel in 1891. He died in 1899. In 1933 the City of Tampa leased the Tampa Bay Hotel and established a municipal museum that later became the Henry B. Plant Museum.

4 Henry B. Plant website www.plantmuseum.com section on History.

5 Tampa Morning Tribune, November 11, 1951.

6 Ibid.

7 This plan was reported to have been announced in Washington, D. C. by Mrs. Elizabeth Murray who was President of the Women's History Foundation. She had acquired 600 lots just north of the Gandy Bridge"to build a permanent memorial to the achievements of women of all the world."

8 The two institutions continued to share space in the same building when they moved to the facility that is now the home of the Tampa Museum of Art.

9 The Whitney show and its catalog were produced by The American Federation of Arts (AFA) in New York. In the years 1959–61 the AFA also organized retrospectives of the work of William Pachner, Abraham Rattner and Karl Zerbe.

10 Balcomb Greene Retrospective, The Harmon Gallery, Naples, Florida, February 28–March 13, 1982, essay by Irving Sandler, p. 4.

11 Philip Hiss writing for Florida Accent, December 31, 1967.

12 He moved in 1969 from Tampa to Wichita, Kansas to take another director's position.

13 The Tampa Bay Art Center, First Annual Director's Report, May 1968, p. 1.

14 The building was owned by the Florida State Fair Association.

15 Bob Martin reported in the March 29, 1968 Tampa Times that five works would not be shown because of their sexual references.

16 Conversations with Joseph Testa-Secca on March 15, 2003.

17 Tampa Magazine Vol. 1, No. 11, p. 20.

18 In 1963 he had his first one person show at the Krasner Gallery in New York and in 1964 received a Guggenheim Fellowship which allowed him to travel throughout Europe. The July 30, 1967 Floridian featured a story by Suzanne Harris on the Tampa art scene that stated that Harrison Covington believed "artists (were) being frustrated by the shortage of commercial galleries and competitive exhibitions in which to gain reputations." Covington said "a gallery at the start has to be a crusade." Floridian, p. 17.

19 Conversations with Peter Foe, Curator, Contemporary Art Museum, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, January 2003

20 Gene Baro, Graphicstudio U.S.F.: An Experiment in Art Education, The Brooklyn Museum, Falcon Press, Philadelphia, 1978, foreword by Michael Botwinick, p. 5.

21 Donald J. Saff, "Graphicstudio, U.S.F." Art Journal 34, No. 1 (Fall 1974) p. 10.

22 Baro, p. 8.

23 They remain subscribers to this day.

24 Baro, p. 9.

25 Baro, p. 12.

26 Today the collection of works completed at Graphicstudio is more than 700 and the entire collection is archived at the National Gallery in Washington, D. C.

27 Baro, p. 21.

28 Ibid., p. 22.

29 Pharos, Quarterly Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida, Winter 1967, p. 46.

30 Ibid., p. 47.

31 This eight-by-twelve-foot canvas, West Coastal Landscape, was acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts in 2002.

32 The Arts Center website www.theartscenter.org.

33 Conversations with Bruce Marsh at his studio in Ruskin, Florida, on March 28, 2003.

34 William Pachner Retrospective, The American Federation of Arts, New York, 1959, The Thistle Press, New York, Essay by Kenneth Donahue, p. 7.

35 Ibid., p. 16.

36 Since 1951 Pachner has maintained two studios: one in Woodstock, Vermont, and the other in Clearwater, Florida.

37 Bertha Matilde Honoré Palmer (1849–1918).

38 Much of her collection is now part of the Art Institute of Chicago's collection.

39 An inventory of his estate at the time of his death in 1936 reveals his possession of a catalogue of contemporary sculpture. This may indicate that he had some interest in contemporary art forms.

40 Conversation with Katherine Rowland on Siesta Key, Florida, February 20, 2003.

41 Conversations with Ann Solomon in Sarasota, Florida, Summer 2002.

42 Ossorio was a collector as well as an artist and showed his surrealist paintings with Betty Parsons Gallery in New York in 1941. Ossorio was friends with Jean Dubuffet and Jackson Pollock. Clyfford Still, Grace Hartigan and Ray Parker used the spare studio on his property. Syd Solomon Revisted, Selby Gallery, Ringling School of Art & Design, February 9–March 10, 2001, Essay by Michael Solomon, unpaginated.

43 The East Hampton Art Colony: an exhibition of contemporary paintings, graphics and sculpture from the East Hampton Guild Hall and New York Galleries, Pensacola Museum of Art, Pensacola, Florida, 1979, p. 7.

44 Marcia Corbino's manuscript for The History of Visual Art in Sarasota, University of Florida Press, Gainesville, Florida, March 2003.

45 The finished painting was donated to the Herron Museum of Art (now the Indianapolis Museum of Art) in 1958.