Philip Heylen, Vice Mayor of Antwerp, Belgium—the home of Peter Paul Rubens—has made several trips to Sarasota in the past few years, meeting with municipal and arts leaders to form stronger cultural links. He hopes to do a series of projects with the galleries and museums and has been talking with Jill Kaplan of the Sarasota Season of Sculpture about bringing an artist from Antwerp here. He likes to stay at the Helmsley Sandcastle Hotel on Lido, where he once managed to offer Mrs. Helmsley a fresh towel as she was getting out of the pool before a half dozen staffers were able to rush over with one.

How romantic can a museum be? How about reuniting two lovers who have been separated for many years? That’s just what is happening in Sarasota this Valentine’s Day month of February. The City of Amsterdam has loaned the Ringling Museum the companion portrait to its Frans Hals portrait of Pieter Jacobsz Olycan, purchased by John Ringling in the 1920s. Olycan’s wife, Maritge, who died five years later, was painted by Hals in 1639. A conservator at the Rijksmuseum whose parents live in Williamstown, Mass., has been cleaning Maritge’s portrait at the Clark Institute; the two paintings will move from the Ringling to the Clark in April. Hals painted more than 20 portraits of various members of the Olycan family.

This month Nikitas (Nick) Kavoukles will have a show of digital media work at the JABU Center Gallery on Ivanhoe Street to benefit the Crowley Museum and Nature Center. Nick, a painter born in Greece and trained in Old-World techniques, doesn’t think of himself as a nature photographer, but he spent quite a bit of time at Crowley and Myakka gathering ideas. One morning, some yards away from him, a Florida panther materialized from the mist, paused to eye him, then continued on its way across his path. (He reported it to the ranger station, but no one believed him until they later found its tracks). He's also had close encounters with armadillos, hawks, wild pigs and “an amorous alligator” whose advances he discouraged. Most recently he found himself “ensnared in the vast, invisible web of a banana spider.” Who says artists don’t lead exciting lives?

Transitions: Ramses Serrano has moved his Sonnet Gallery from Main Street to Towles Court’s historic Perry/Little House on Adams Lane, constructed in 1931 and designated a historic structure by the city in 2000. Just next door, on the corner, Tim Jaeger has joined forces with chef Rita Tyler to open the Canvas Café Leysin, which will offer Mediterranean cuisine with a restaurant and wine bar in a gallery setting.  Jaeger, who most recently directed the Little Gallery, says he wants a place “where artists can hang out and have a glass of wine…a relaxed place where people know there is going to be someone they know.”

    Valentine’s Day is near and love is in the air. But here in the Sunshine State, our government wants to make sure we don’t get carried away by it. 
    While we don’t care about impulsive marriages for out-of-towners (there’s even a 24-hour wedding chapel in Venice), folks who live here have to mull over the pros and cons of matrimony for at least three days. That’s how long residents have to wait between getting a license and saying “I do.” 
    “It’s sort of a cooling-off period,” says Nancy Taussig, owner of Barefoot Weddings in Sarasota. “It’s like buying a gun; you can have it but can’t use it right away.”
    Taussig, a notary public, has been marrying people on the beach and at country clubs and hotels for 15 years. She gets calls from concierges, wedding planners and people all over the country—at all hours of the night. 
    Before 1998, anyone could get a license and tie the knot in the same day, but then the state enacted new marriage laws to cut down on the divorce rate. You can get around the wait if you take a pre-marital course, but that requires a lot more advance planning. 
    It’s one of those “we-know-better-than-you” laws, like no booze before noon on Sunday. We’re now one of nine states that have a “cooling-off” period and one of a handful with different rules for residents.
    The law hasn’t affected Taussig’s business, but it’s caused a few wrinkles: A Georgia couple came in on a Friday to get their license for a Saturday wedding. The bride failed to tell Taussig she once lived in Florida and still had a Florida driver’s license. The Sarasota Clerk’s office told them they’d have to wait.
    “They freaked out. They had the flowers, the guests, everything,” Taussig says. But clerks of the court aren’t heartless. “We were able to get an exception. They gave her a big lecture about the importance of changing her documents.”
    Once, a hotel concierge called Taussig to come over and perform a wedding. Taussig told the couple they’d have to wait until Tuesday. “I never heard from them again,” she says. (Sometimes Big Brother knows best.)
    Another local couple was in a hurry to get married before the man left town. When they heard about the three-day waiting period, they insisted Taussig marry them at the earliest possible time.
“Just after midnight, my husband went with me to their home and I married them,” Taussig says. “The man was just going out of state, not even out of the country. People are funny.”
    Despite the romance swirling around February, Taussig says April and October are her biggest months for weddings. The exception was a few years ago, when Valentine’s Day fell on a Saturday.
    “I had four weddings on four different beaches on three different islands,” Taussig says. “The weather was bad and getting worse as the day went on. That was a year to remember.”