SRQ Magazine | In Conversation with Steven High and Pedro Reis

In

NOVEMBER 2020 EDITION

Conversation

PEDRO REIS Circus Arts Conservatory

STEVEN HIGH The Ringling Museum

IN CONVERSATION WITH STEVEN HIGH AND PEDRO REIS ON THE TRANSFORMATIONS THEIR INSTITUTES HAVE HAD TO MAKE TO GROW INTO THE NEW REALITY. INTERVIEW BY WES ROBERTS

WE UNDERSTAND THAT THE RINGLING HAD AN AMAZING COINCIDENCE, YOU PREPARED TO HANG AN IMPORTANT PIECE OF ART, JUST AS THE COVID PANDEMIC STARTED, THAT SEEMED STRANGELY APPROPRIATE. Steven High, The Ringling Museum: We hung our [newly restored] painting of the court of Emperor Justinian just as we were closed for that initial session of COVID. [The Plague of Justinian was a terrible pandemic in about 550 A.D.] How appropriate is that? It’s one of the largest pieces now in our collection; it’s 22-feet wide. It used to hang in the great hall at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. John Ringling bought it, it hung at The Ringing for a while in the ‘40s, but before we opened as a museum,

it was taken down and rolled up.

It deteriorated until about nine years ago; the Montreal art museum wanted to borrow it for an exhibition. We pulled it out on our stage and rolled it out. That was the only place that was big enough to unroll it. We got up in the rafters to photograph it. And ever since that time, I’ve wanted to restore it. The Getty Foundation gave us $176,000 as part of their Preserving Canvas Grant. Now it is hanging up in a place of honor in gallery 21. We were able to live stream a discussion in one of the galleries. We had our curator and our restorers talking about the complexity of restoring a painting of that scale. As you walk into the art museum, you turn left, and it’s Emperor Justinian sitting at his court. He has people petitioning

him for authority or money, and he’s sitting there contemplating their requests. It’s fascinating how the work is able to kind of transport you back to that period.

We experience an underlying narrative and underlying politics that support this work.

THE CIRCUS ALSO HAS AN ANCIENT HISTORY, AND LIKEWISE, THIS IS FAR FROM THE FIRST, OR THE WORST, PANDEMIC THAT THE CIRCUS HAS SURVIVED. Pedro Reis, Circus Arts Conservatory: Absolutely. The Circus is one of the oldest forms of family entertainment. You have carvings on cave walls; you have

Egyptian paintings of tumblers and acrobats. During the World Wars, Circus was a place to go to have some fun and see artistry.

We know there’s no substitution to live. People have been cooped up. They want to have this interaction. They want to smile and laugh. The arts is inspiration. It lifts the spirit up. As artists, we’ve been very frustrated because we’ve been wanting to lift people up, make people feel good. High: We have works that go back to 2000 B.C. We have paintings that were painted during the plague years in the 1400s that referenced the plague in symbolic ways.

It’s a connection to history.

ENGAGING ARTS AUDIENCES OUTSIDE OF THE BOX.

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ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS STEVEN HIGH, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE JOHN AND MABLE RINGLING MUSEUM OF ART Joining The Ringling in 2011, he has undertaken major strategic planning; launched design, construction, and the opening for the Kotler|Coville Glass Pavilion and the Ting Tsung & Wei Fong Chao Center for Asian Art; Tibbals Circus Galleries, the Bolger Playspace, and the Monda Gallery of Contemporary Art. He has a M.A. in Art History from Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts and a M.B.A. degree from the School of Business, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond.

High’s curatorial experience and interests are in modern and contemporary art. He is also on the faculty of Florida State University.

PEDRO REIS, CEO, CIRCUS ARTS CONSERVATORY Pedro Reis began his circus training at age 12 in Cape Town South Africa and later helped develop the first circus school there. He toured Europe and the USA extensively. In 1984, Pedro made his American debut with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. In 1997, Pedro (CEO) and his wife Dolly Jacobs founded Circus Sarasota which later became The Circus Arts Conservatory, a non profit organization dedicated to continuing the circus arts legacy. He has received numerous accolades, including a place in the John and Mable Ringling Circus Museum Hall of Fame and the Circus Ring of Fame at St. Armand’s Circle.

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With our Asian wing, some of the oldest work that we have is Chinese pottery that they estimate is from about 2,500 years B.C. There is that continuity. In addition, we have a very strong contemporary program so that we can bring people from the deep past to the very present and make connections between the two.

WHAT HAVE YOU BOTH BEEN ABLE TO DO TO KEEP YOUR INSTITUTIONS OPEN TO THE COMMUNITY? High: It has been interesting. We were able to reopen fairly quickly when the Governor announced his Phase One plan in early May. He singled out museums as part of Phase one.

You could only do partial capacity, but we’ve got so much total capacity on our grounds that we’ve been able to effectively be fully open since May 27th. We’ve had to reduce the one-on-one interactions with our visitors. Now, the tours are all gone because we just can’t have that interaction.

To replace that, we went entirely digital. With your smartphone, you can scan [Q.R. codes] and participate in a tour in the museum.

The museum is a place of respite to come and get out of this mode of worry. To look at beauty in the galleries and to experience beauty on the grounds. To offer that in an environment that’s really quite safe has been an important aspect of what we’ve done. That’s not what we are, because we also are about ideas and concepts and hopefully exciting and challenging work.

But this other aspect of what we bring has been very heightened in the COVID world. Particularly at the beginning, when things were really uncertain, we played a really major role in providing that. We’re fortunate in that we have space so that we can welcome our visitors on the campus, and I feel bad for those organizations, especially those in the performing arts,

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which can’t perform. That’s been a great struggle for them. Reis: The big question mark is opening the shows in the Fall. What does it look like? There’s a lot of discussion about outdoor events. In fact, I think outdoors is where it’s going to go. We are planning for our shows in February, hopefully, by then, the vaccines will come along, and the numbers will come down.

Our big top seats 1,648 people.

So, we mandated masks, and we’ll make sure only families sit together; otherwise, you are one seat apart from anybody else. We’re just going to make the best of it.

AND BOTH OF YOU HAVE BEEN TAKING YOUR PROGRAMMING ONLINE. Reis: Our One World Circus was incredible.

We had artists in five different time zones, live-streaming the program worldwide. We brought staff and volunteers together, and we managed to pull it off. We got a really good response from it. We’ll definitely have live and digital programs in the future.

National research seems to show that asking for a $25 donation per household is the ticket. We will try it with the Sailor Circus in December, and we will do it with a big top performance and set the bar. For One World Circus, we just said, “donations would be great.”

And we raised $10,000. It was fantastic. We literally got donations from around the world: in Russia, in Holland, in Japan, in South Africa. Fantastic. High: I do a series of live streaming programs with my curators. Last night, we had an event with Rhiannon Paget, our curator of Asian art. She was meeting with our members live, and they could interact and have a conversation with her. All of these things are being recorded and can be posted to our website. We did a project in collaboration with the Hermitage, with Jennifer Packer, one of the new artists who re-

ceived the Greenfield Prize. When we get back into sort of normal times, we’re going to bring back some of the in-person experiences when it feels comfortable, but we are still going to be providing digital content because we’re reaching a lot more people. People are accessing these programs, both statewide and internationally.

LET’S TALK ABOUT CIRCUS AS PART OF THE HISTORICAL DNA OF SARASOTA AND BRADENTON. Reis: It all begins with John Ringling. Originally, the Ringling Circus Winter Quarters were in Hartford, CT, and they decided to get out of the winter cold. Sarasota was built around the circus community. We have the fantastic Ringling Museum that John and Mable bequeathed to the people of Florida. Sarasota grew on the back of the circus arts. That’s part of our mission to continue that legacy of Circus in Sarasota and keep the circus arts alive. High: Well, you know, we always look to Ringling and his legacy. Our mission statement specifically mentions Ringling as a component of who we are. There is an acknowledgment of what he brought here through his collection, and our first-ever director is the one who came up with the idea of the circus museum. We are also very cognizant of our time and of the people who live here in Sarasota and Manatee. Reis: We have the Sailor Circus Academy, which we started last year as the first-ever circus magnet school. We put on performances in the big top and bring in artists from around the world to represent the Circus at the highest level. We have shows for eight weeks at the Ringling Museum, and normally there is the summer show at the Historic Asolo Theater. We started an additional program with Booker Middle School. All of those efforts are how we bring awareness to the

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circus arts. I noticed when I came to America; they kept talking about the circus “performer.” I would say, “you know, a monkey can perform, right? I’m an artist, just like a ballet dancer is an artist.

An opera singer is an artist. I’m an artist.” So an artist is somebody who’s dedicated their life to pursuing perfection. Dedication and passion, loving what you do, and wanting to perfect it and doing it for the applause. Our salvation is a standing ovation. We live for a standing ovation. And if you’re getting a standing ovation, you must be doing something right.

Like everything in life, there are different levels, there is the medium, and there is the exceptional, and there is everything in-between. It’s up to you to choose where you want to be in life as an artist. I choose to be on the moon.

HOW HAVE YOUR INSTITUTIONS MODERNIZED YOUR EXPERIENCES? High: That is a stereotype of the “stuffy museum,” but we’ve always seen ourselves as a sort of community center, a place where all people are welcome, a place where ideas are shared, constantly alive and constantly changing. When you come to visit us, you will always see something different, something new, something evolving.

You’ll see a performance in our historic Asolo Theater of young artists from anywhere in the world. Right now, we’ve had a residency of John Simms, a Sarasota-based conceptual artist, and a mathematician. He’ll be doing a performance in the spring when it’s safe to do those again. I mean, we’re in a series of buildings, and we’re on acres of grounds that are really quite beautiful, but within it, all our themes are of wonder, insight, learning, and growth.

That’s what a modern museum is. It’s about being able to really engage with your community, to provide stories that are relevant 38 | srq magazine_ NOV20 live local

to your community, and to also provide opportunities for growth and expansion of the mind. Reis: It’s a very good question. For us, the biggest challenge in our lives is the word “circus.” The Circus used to have the “sideshow” or the “freakshow,” and many of the traveling circuses didn’t have great reputations. The Ringling family really cleaned it up. But still, open an American dictionary and look up the word “circus,” it’s attached to chaos, right? In politics, the criticism goes something like, “the White House or Congress is a circus.” And we suffer that consequence. We are changing this perception. Our performances are a blend of traditional Circus and avant-garde, contemporary Circus. Not every artist in our ring wears sequins. It’s not always that flamboyant flash anymore; it’s more about the artistry and the emotion of connecting with the audience. With a more contemporary style, the Circus is becoming more and more popular. The traditional American Circus was a three-ring circus. It was all spectacle, and things were going on all over the place. The European style show is about a more intimate setting. It provides a stage for the artists to really present and connect with the audience. Imagine the audience member sitting in their seat; they are watching something and thinking, “That is totally incredible. Unbelievable. No way.

It’s impossible. The guy is doing a handstand on one finger. How is that possible?” The Circus makes the unbelievable believable.

NORMAL REVENUES HAVE TAKEN A HIT, I KNOW, SO LET’S TALK ABOUT OTHER FUNDING SOURCES. High: Statewide funding for arts and culture is important, and it gets cut almost all the time. We and many other institutions, submit grants to the department of cultural affairs up in Tallahassee. We go through a

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grant review process, and we get a little money from them, but it usually gets cut as part of the budget deal—every now and then, it gets fully funded. We are a division of a state university; without that support, this museum would have a very difficult time surviving because it’s a large capital cost.

We have recently pulled out all of the windows on the top floor of the Ca’D’Zan that were facing to the west. We shipped them to Philadelphia, where they could be re-leaded. The lead in those windows was breaking down, and they were leaking whenever we had a storm or rain. They are being reinstalled right this minute, back there at the house. That’s a major half a million dollar project.

We’ve got 500,000-square feet of buildings here, and they require a lot of care and maintenance. It’s very difficult to keep a museum of this scale, and these historic properties, healthy. Reis: When we first started, one of the objectives was to raise the perception of the circus arts. To help it be recognized as an art form. In 2017, we partnered with the Smithsonian and the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, and we were able to present on the National Mall in Washington D. C. That, and Dolly Jacob’s recognition as the first circus artist to get a National Endowment of Arts fellowship, opened doors. These are forwardmoving footsteps. When I applied for my first grant from the Department of Cultural Affairs in Tallahassee, there was no Circus Arts subject. We had to apply as theater or folk art or something else. Now they, like the NEA, recognize circus art. These are forward steps. High: We received an NEA grant, where we will be looking at women in the Circus. We have had to delay it a little bit because of the performance aspect of it. We are working with Isabella Rossellini, who does not want to travel right now, so that program will

be going into 2022. The support of the NEA, the support of other granting agencies [is important].

Our local foundations have been wonderful about reaching out to the arts and helping to support the arts. They’ve all done things to help all of us here during this time.

THE DEMAND FOR EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS HAS EXPLODED AS QUARANTINING HAS LED TO AN INCREASE IN HOMESCHOOLING, BOTH GUIDED AND INDEPENDENT; HOW HAS THIS BEEN REFLECTED IN YOUR OFFERINGS? PEDRO, YOUR CIRCUS ARTS PROGRAM WAS ONE OF THE EARLIEST LOCAL CAMPS TO OPEN FOR STUDENTS ATTENDEES; WHAT PLANNING WENT INTO THE PROCESS? Reis: We had almost daily meetings to discuss the ins and outs, the pros and cons. We had to plan everything; the parents are dropping off the kids outside, we had a staff member greet them, we took their temperatures, and then we created this 40-ft-long tunnel that the kids were to walk through. At the end of the tunnel, we had faucets for hand washing. Inside we always had 6-ft distancing. And we had no incidents, so we really created a formula that worked. High: We were very much into homeschooling prior to COVID. We would get 300 to 600 homeschoolers. We focus them around the ROAR! [Ringling Order of Art Reader program]. We actually ended up doubling the program because we could only handle 300 people at a time, so we would replicate the program the next day. That very nicely migrated online, with all of the other programs that we have been doing. We’ve been able to keep in contact and keep working with these families and providing resource educational resources.

And all of our education programs are tied into state curriculum so that you can accomplish certain curricular goals through these

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programs. Our education team, if you go online, can provide basically a classroom experience.

A lot of those programs that we were doing physically migrated very nicely to the web. Also, we’re doing dedicated tours, where the educator will design a tour for your group. If you have a class, they’ll design the tour and then leave the virtual tour with your students.

Those are pretty powerful.

TALK TO ME ABOUT HOW YOUR BUSINESS HAS SURVIVED AND HOW YOU WILL GET BACK ON TRACK IN THE FUTURE. High: It’s a two-year project.

We don’t think we’ll be back at anything like normal until probably 2022. The overall impact of tourism today is significant.

We’re doing everything we can to preserve our staff, preserve our jobs here. We employ 250 people.

Our annual memberships have been great and supportive of the museum. We keep at it. Reis: Unfortunately, we had to cancel a lot of our shows. Box office is obviously a very strong denominator for our budget. Luckily, we have reserved cash, and we saved it up for a rainy day. This was a storm, you know? We did the summer camp program. We got our magnet educational programs going, and we found ourselves planning for the future. This scenario is the most challenging time I think we’ve ever experienced in our lives. Honestly, it is. I’m very, very optimistic about the future, but of course, you have to be reasonable, sensible, and have both feet on the ground. You can’t be living in fantasy land. At the Circus, we’re innovative, we can make things happen, you know, give me a roll of duct tape, and I’m telling you, we’ll fix things. It’s going to be okay. SRQ The In Conversation program is produced by the BrandStory Division of SRQ MEDIA.