Maestro of the Museum

The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art bears the name of its founders; and there’s certainly no reason to downplay the role of the man who, with the support of his beloved wife, built this symbol of Sarasota and the collection it holds. But when it comes to examining who helped determine the way the museum, as a world-famous attraction, looks and works today, it may fairly be said that one other man played just as important a role: the Ringling’s first director, A. Everett “Chick” Austin.

Austin, who died more than 50 years ago at the age of 56, was, it seems, a flame that burned brightly if too briefly. Charismatic, endlessly energetic, well-read and well-traveled, with a remarkable eye for art and a talent for making the right connections, he was in many ways the very model of a museum director. A true Renaissance man, he had a passionate love and aptitude not only for the visual arts but for theater, music, dance, cooking, entertaining, magic, the circus—you name it.

By the time Austin came to the Ringling Museum, in 1946, he had already made an international name for himself as the director for 17 years of the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Conn. Hired for that job at the tender age of just 26, thanks largely to his mentor, Edward W. Forbes (director of Harvard’s Fogg Museum), Chick (an early nickname that stuck) was soon bringing to that conservative institution shows of modern art by the likes of Picasso, Mondrian, Dali and Max Ernst. (Bear in mind, to most Americans of the 1930s, these were new and revolutionary artists.)

Not content merely to present art exhibitions, however, Chick also threw himself into the performing arts world. The world premiere of the opera Four Saints in Three Acts, with music by Virgil Thomson, libretto by Gertrude Stein, and an all-black cast, took place at the Atheneum’s Avery Memorial Building (designed largely by Chick himself, and believed to be the first theater inside a museum building in the country). After founding a group called The Friends and Enemies of Modern Music in 1928, Chick was instrumental in premiering new works by composers including Igor Stravinsky and Charles Ives in Hartford. Through a friendship with impresario Lincoln Kirstein, Austin was also largely responsible for bringing to America for the first time legendary choreographer George Balanchine (he hoped to house Balanchine’s new school of ballet in Hartford, but eventually lost out to New York City).

When time permitted, Chick even took to the stage himself, playing Hamlet, among other roles, and he dabbled in set design in Hollywood. And he and his wife, Helen, were famous for the parties they threw at their Hartford home—a Palladio-inspired Austin design, now open to the public, that resembled a stage set in its long horizontal facade.

But by 1944, Austin had pushed his limits—and his luck—with the trustees at the Atheneum as far as he could, and his personal life was in flux. Although devoted to his wife and an affectionate father to his two children, Chick, a bisexual, had long lived a life separate from them as well. He was, perhaps, ready for a change from Hartford and home life. “The Great Osram,” as Chick dubbed himself when performing magic shows, was now ready to work some magic on the Ringling Museum—which stood in dire need of his transformative powers.

In 1946, when Austin came to Sarasota to assume his new role (a role for which his old friend Forbes suggested him), the Ringling was not, as his biographer Eugene Gaddis puts it in his book, Magician of the Modern, “the pristine temple of art that John Ringling had completed in 1930.” Following Ringling’s death in 1936, long legal battles had kept the museum both closed to the public (even though Ringling had left the property to the State of Florida) and, eventually, in a perilous state of decay. In the humid tropical climate, the grounds were wildly overgrown, and John and Mable’s magnificent house, Cà d’Zan, after being closed for a decade, had fallen prey to mold, mildew, insects and general deterioration. Ringling’s prized art collection was in danger from the lack of environmental control; when it rained, water reportedly ran down the gallery walls.