Welcome

This website was designed, as a library, with the Ringling Museum Docents in mind, but is of interest to all. It has grown to over 1,000 pages and 2,000 pictures.
It describes in detail the main features of the various museum venues. This library mainly consists of docent research, Ringling Museum study materials and publications, articles from the Sarasota County History Center and area newspapers.

This website is not part of the The John and Mable Ringling Museum / FSU organization, but a private development created and maintained by Willem van Osnabrugge, active docent from 1999-2014 at the Ringling Museum.

You may contribute appropriate articles for credited publication on this portal.

Emeritus and thank you

After 15 years of being very actively involved as a docent at the Ringling Museum, as well as developing this website for almost the same amount of time, I retired in 2014. I have also allowed Google to place ads on the webpages, for some monetary reward for the thousands of hours I have committed to this project. But the biggest reward are the emails with great comments on the content of the website from Ringling staff, the Docent Council as well as many docent collegues and web visitors from all over the world. That really has made it all worthwhile.

For comments or information please email:

Statistics

Last year this website received 86,000 unique visitors, with 111,000 visits (1.3 visits per visitor), reading 184,000 pages (2.1 pages per visit), coming from over 100 countries (64% USA).
Go here for details.

Latest Additions

We were invited to give a presentation at the National Docent Symposium in San Francisco in October 2013. Full details will be given on the Education page.Watch my contribtion. Click here for a video, describing this website and the use by Sarasota Pine View high school students.

John's yachts, - Engelberta van Brienen painting and 400 year history, - Wallenda's history in 44 slides, - Comparison of Pieterskerk painting and real building, - Rubens' Remuneration, - Red pigment on Rubens' paintings turns to black, - From Bozzetti to Tapestries, - Liz Taylor's jewelry at the Ringling, - Rubens bible, - Did Moses have horns?, - The flowers in Roman Courtship

Disclaimer

While every attempt has been made to ensure that the information contained in this Site has been obtained from reliable sources, RinglingDocents.org is not responsible for any errors or omissions, or for the results obtained from the use of this information. All information in this Site is provided "as is".

Several modules on this Site (such as -but not limited to- the Dutch and Chinese Language Sound Players and voice overs, the Interactive Sculpture Panorama and Panorama of the Century design and movie) are copyright and the intellectual property of RinglingDocents.org.

The views and opinions expressed in this Site are strictly those of the author and in no way represent those of The John and Mable Ringling Museum, the Ringling Board, Florida State University, the Board of Trustees, nor the State of Florida.