Florida Museum displays ancient Cypriot art
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The John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida, now exhibits over 200 ancient Cypriot artifacts.
Luigi Palma di Cesnola, a former U.S. consul to Larnaka, Cyprus, excavated the pieces, including a colossal limestone head, from the site of Golgoi in the 1870s. Golgoi was a religious center dedicated to Apollo where people buried votive statues to make way for new ones.
Cesnola later directed the Metropolitan Museum of Art and transferred his collection there, but sold 3,300 duplicate items to John and Mable Ringling in 1928. The Ringling Museum has spent nearly a century preparing a permanent gallery for the collection, titled “Ancient Art from Cyprus and the Mediterranean.” The exhibited objects include sculptures, vessels, and jewelry, showing the artistic traditions of Cyprus, an island in the eastern Mediterranean.
The Ringling’s Cypriot collection is the third largest in North America and is part of a larger effort to reinstall 21 permanent galleries before the museum’s centennial in 2028.
