Gail,
I so disappointed not the see the art museum, but it would have cost me me
$400 extra for airfare to stay another day longer. The next day was good
Friday and holiday fares kicked. I could have stayed until April 21st and
the fares would have gone down drastically, but I wanted to see my
grandbabies for Easter.
There are so many good museums out there that people don't realize what
wonderful collections they have. When I looked at the Ringling website,
there are small phots and very few of them. They just added the videos of
the mansion to their website. I really didn't know what they had at the
museum, until my preview day for the photoshoot. The public relations
director took me all over the site, but the art musuem. The Ringling
complex is a bit overwhelming. There is so much there you can't see it all
in a week. You will see when all of these photos go online.
I was with the Keeper of the Ca d'Zan for four days. FYI, he is called the
Keeper instead of curator because the Keeper is a European title. It means
the person in charge of the entire mansion. I was doing the shoot in the
Gameroom. The Keeper had very limited time that day. He asked, "Don't you
want to shoot the ceiling of the Ballroom?" I asked why. Then he explained
about how it was painted by the same artist and was of costumed dancers from
different nations. When I first went through the Ballroom on preview day, I
was talking with the powers-to-be and didn't look up at the ceiling. All
the other days, we by-passed the Ballroom to go to the other floors.
Because of the time constaint, I shoot the entire Ballroom 22 panels in an
about an hour. All the photos in the room turned out wonderful except one or
two. They needed tweaking. I think you all will be very surprised when you
see the photos. I should have all Ballroom webpages online by next week.
Every bit of this mansion is so ornate. It is like opening a Christmas
package every time you turn a corner in the mansion. You can tell it that
it was made during the art deco period but is called Venetian gothic. I
took a lot of photos of the mansion's detailed borders to use as
backgrounds on the webpages.
I did photograph a good amount of the rose garden's statues. But didn't have
time to stop and smell the roses. I really wanted to spent more time in the
rose garden, but ran out of time. Growing roses is one of my hobbies. The
statue photos will go into my Costume Heaven series that contains costumes
in statues.
I photographed a couple of the 18th Century tapestries in the mansion. Not
sure how well they turned out because the photos are so large at this
moment. I would love to go back and photograph more of the tapestries.
The circus costume museum is the last museum before the mansion. The sign
is not very large. I didn't get into the costume storage area because they
are in the process of moving it. The asst. curator said that it will be in
its new location next spring. I would also like to see the costume
collection at their opera house.
If anyone if planning a trip to Orlando, you might want to take a side trip
to Sarasota and visit the Ringling Museum. It is well worth it!
Penny Ladnier,
Owner
www.costumegallery.com
www.costumelibrary.com
www.costumeclassroom.com
_______________________________________________
h-costume mailing list
h-costume@mail.indra.com
http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
