A chronology of Sarasota’s artistic history is now available for the public to see in downtown Sarasota. On January 16, Michael Saunders & Company unveiled a new public art installation, A Legacy in the Making: Sarasota’s Visual Arts History 1945-65. A Legacy is a 200-foot mural wall that can be seen through the windows of Saunders & Company’s downtown headquarters on the corner of Orange Avenue and Main Street, depicting a nearly complete history of the visual arts in Sarasota.
The mural wall goes hand in hand with the Ringling College Galleries exhibition Origins: Sarasota Artist Colony, which delves into the wave of artists that flooded Sarasota after the second world war, creating what was then known as the Sarasota artist colony. It was this movement that helped create the basis for the artistic community that Sarasota has today—with the creation of the mural wall, which is accompanied by a website, Jaeger hopes to bridge the physical exhibition showcasing artworks of that era at Ringling College with a street-level experience for the public.
“We wanted to hit a sort of trifecta with this. You have a large-scale mural wall in a high-traffic area with moving images and bright colors that is easily digestible. The second part is to make it mobile, creating a website that we’ll continually contribute to as more history is brought to our attention, and the third is the exhibition, with the actual artworks and will contain docent tours and all kinds of engaging experiences,” says Jaeger…