People in Sarasota know it as the place with the five big pink flamingos standing guard along Tamiami Trail. Still, few are prepared for the uplifting art they find inside the Marietta Museum of Art & Whimsy.
“They discover a little piece of happiness within themselves,” said founder and curator Mary Lee. “I hope that they relate to the environment, and they just feel good looking at the paintings and looking at the sculptures. That it just gives them a good feeling, that's all we're hoping for.”
Lee’s strategy is to find art that triggers a visceral response.
“I'm not looking for the technically perfect stuff,” Lee said. “I need something that really, really grabs you; what I call art from the heart. Something that hits you emotionally. I want the viewer to have an experience with the artwork, with what they see.”
As the name suggests, much of the art inside the museum is light-hearted, whimsical and even humorous. By design, it’s a place where people can check their worries and concerns at the door. Lee said it’s also a haven for overcoming loss.
“As we get older, we lose our child, we lose our friends, we lose a pet, and I think that gives us a little hole in our heart and we go around and try to fill up that hole,” Lee observed. “And I think that the artwork says that it's okay. It's okay to lose something because something else will come in and fill that.
The walls inside burnish a treasure trove of surrealism, magical realism and restive Florida landscapes, including a large collection of Florida Highwaymen paintings.
The outdoor courtyard behind the museum is Lee’s pride and joy. It treats visitors to a cavalcade of colorful creatures.
“So, this year we're featuring orchids and mosaics, and we've had a couple of young painters in and they've been painting our benches,” said Lee.
Inside or out, every painting and sculpture has its own story. Lee and her volunteer docents regale visitors during gallery talks and as they stroll the collection.
“And sometimes people make up their own stories, you know,” Lee noted. “When they see the artwork, it kicks off something in their brain. And so, that's what we're looking for.”
While Disney World may be the happiest place on earth, the Marietta Museum of Art & Whimsy is without question the happiest place in Sarasota.
To see this segment on PBS, visit "The whimsical side of Sarasota art."
MORE INFORMATION:
Lee created the Sarasota museum in 2008.
“Long, long, long, long, long ago, it was a motel. And along the way, it was the Salastine Palace, it was a Thai restaurant and then it was a Buddhist meditation place. People did yoga here. Then it was the Serendipity Gallery, and they did haute couture clothing, which meant you could buy a scarf for a thousand dollars.”
Lee discovered many of the colorful paintings, stained glass, sculpture and other art objects on display in the museum’s meandering warren of rooms and gardens while strolling Florida’s numerous outdoor art fairs and festivals, such as the Sarasota Spring Craft Fair at Five Points.
Lee noted that roughly 98 percent of the artwork on display is owned by the museum, with the other 2 percent on loan from her personal collection.
“We have artists that work in metal,” Lee said. “We have painters. We have sculptors. We have people that work with clay. Quite a variety."
The inclusion of the word “whimsy” in the museum’s name lets the public know that the artwork inside and throughout the grounds is fun and uplifting rather than the somewhat stodgy offerings people find in most art museums.
“I was a caregiver,” Lee explained. “My dad had a big stroke. I wound up going back and forth from Florida to Connecticut, and finally I wound up just living in Connecticut, helping out with my mom and dad. I was both an artist and a registered nurse. There were times when I just seemed down, and I would go to art museums to get away and try to pick up my spirits. Sometimes that happened, but most times it didn’t. I was disappointed because, I thought, they're not helping me uplift my spirit so that I could go back and keep doing what I was doing.”
These experiences left Lee with the conviction that many museums miss the point of why people visit them.
“Do they go to get depressed?” Lee asked rhetorically. “I don’t think so. Do they go to maybe lift their spirits? Sure, that sounds a little more plausible to me. And so I just kept going to all these different art museums up north and in Florida, and I just thought that there needed to be something different.”
Such as artworks that show a sense of humor.
“Museums are a bit devoid of humor, and I thought that was kind of weird because people are humorous. They love humor. We all kind of have a silly streak. When I look at artwork, I look to see is there an element of humor.”
For Lee, humor has a very specific definition.
“When I was growing up in Connecticut, we were all very, very good at the put-down, at sarcasm,” said Lee. “It took me a long time to realize that with sarcasm, you’re putting down another person or a group of people to elevate yourself. That wasn’t what I wanted to do at all. The artwork I love most contains humor that just strikes everybody’s funny bone, no matter what color you are, no matter what problems you have. It’s just part of being human. It’s a universal humor. We’re all kind of goofy. I like art and artists who can tap into that universal goofiness.”
Lee actually started the museum in Connecticut. The year was 2006. But she was not able to find a location in Connecticut with enough space and parking.
“I thought that this was going to be a hit because we all have parents and we all have times when we’re a little down and we need to get a little uplifting, and so after three failed land contracts, I got on a plane, came down here and then the next day, I saw this place. I lived about two blocks away, so I knew the social problems of this neighborhood, but I still thought there was a possibility here that this would be a good spot.”
The Gardens
Lee said there is roughly 3,500 square feet under air, but more than double that in the gardens adjoining the museum.
“Yeah, we have really, really nice grounds,” Lee acknowledged. “I bought this property not because of the building. I couldn’t understand the building. But I bought it because of the grounds. I’m a gardener. The oak trees were just beautiful in the back, and I had already been collecting outdoor sculpture and so I thought this was going to be just fine.”
Even though it was the property’s selling point, the garden required considerable work.
“The trees were gray,” she recounted. “They were covered with moss, this gray Spanish moss. It just looked horrible. The whole thing was just solid gray. There was no green at all. So, we brought in a tree company to get a lot of the gray stuff off of the trees, and it was like a whole new place.”
Back then, the gardens had neither the pathways nor pavers that visitors find today.
“There was just sand,” Lee recalled. There were no trails. There was really nothing.”
But Lee saw the potential.
Now visitors can leave their cares behind as they wander paths lined by sculpture and shaded by gnarled branches dripping with orchids, flowers and suspended pieces of art.
“Right now, orchids are the thing,” said Lee, brimming with pride spreading her arms skyward beneath an archway filled with orchids. “We've got orchids everywhere.”
Additional points of interest in Lee’s garden are its mosaics.
There’s one that depicts a wooden walkway that spans a body of water. There are sailboats in a bay dominated by a tall white lighthouse. Another features fish and turtles. But the one Lee singled out is her “cat mosaic.”
“These were my two cats, Fluff and Nutter,” Lee noted.
It’s a work in progress. More are planned; others are in varying stages of progress.
“When we first bought the property, we built a wall I said, okay, someday we're going to install mosaics on it so we included triangles and lightning bolts and circles and rectangles and all sorts of shapes as places to put mosaics,” Lee explained. “So, this year, I said, okay, it's time to start getting those done.”
Those huge Fred Prescott pink flamingoes
Even though she moved the museum to Florida in 2008, it took Lee two years to rehab the building and improve the grounds. Lee finally opened her doors in October of 2010.
One problem that Lee encountered even before she opened her doors was signage.
“You’re only allowed so much space for an advertising sign,” Lee observed.
She came up with an inventive solution to those limitations. She placed five large pink flamingoes at strategic points along U.S. 41.
“I did that on purpose,” Lee noted with a wide grin. “What I wanted to do was have people say, ‘Oh yeah, oh yeah, that’s the place with the big pink flamingoes.’”
Her plan worked to perfection. Today, the flamingoes are a landmark that guides travelers to Ringling, to the airport and to other points of interest in Sarasota along Tamiami Trail.
Lee first laid eyes on them at an art festival in downtown Sarasota.
“A sculptor from Sante Fe, New Mexico by the name of Fred Prescott was selling them there,” said Lee. “As soon as I saw them, I knew they’d be perfect to bookend the museum property and parking area so that passersby knew it was all one enterprise.”
There are more flamingoes in the garden, along with a menagerie of Prescott’s static and kinetic giraffes, gators, seahorses and mermaids.
While Lee collects his work because of their color, playfulness and frivolity, Prescott is also a well-recognized and accomplished monumental artist. He has exhibited his work all over the world. In particular, he has been commissioned to create pieces by Walt Disney Co., Warner Bros. Studios, Porsche, the Chicago Bulls, Michael Jordan and Oprah Winfrey. Prescott’s larger-than-life sculptures have frequently been installed in public parks and venues where people of all ages and backgrounds can enjoy them.
Not just for parking
In addition to the garden behind the museum, the grounds of the Marietta Museum of Art & Whimsy include a large parking area to the north of the museum.
It’s dotted with discovery zones filled with colorful sculpture by Prescott, Keith Bradley and Dale Rogers.
Formerly a chef, Bradley shifted to metal sculpture following a back injury, finding success quickly with his unique, self-taught style. His body of work features a range of animal subject, including horses, chocolate moose and gators made of steel, horseshoes and an array of found objects.
Dale Rogers is best known for his American Dog series of Cor-ten steel sculptures. An example of that sits outside the museum’s front doors creating, in Rogers’ words, a “mental postcard” that “stimulates your mind, stimulates conversation, and provides the catalyst for connecting with one another.”
More of his work can be found in the garden and “Rogers Park” in the parking area, including a homage to Elvis Pressley, a silver metal spaceship and a number of colorful hanging monkeys. The latter trace their origins to his “Metal Monkey Mania” installation for the Blue Ridge at ArtPrize 2011 (which featured 100 monkeys suspended from the girders of a bridge).
Parting thoughts
This past October, the Marietta Museum of Art & Whimsy celebrated the fifteenth anniversary of its opening on Tamiami Trail. Over that span, Lee has created a smartly conceived, well executed journey through whimsical painting, mixed media works, sculpture, mosaics and art objects that impart humor, joy and serenity to visitors. It is truly a happy place for anyone seeking respite from their cares.
Marietta Museum of Art & Whimsy is open from 1 to 4 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday through May 23. It’s located at 2121 North Tamiami Trail in Sarasota. For more information, visit https://whimsymuseum.org/.
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.
WGCU is your trusted source for news and information in Southwest Florida. We are a nonprofit public service, and your support is more critical than ever. Keep public media strong and donate now. Thank you.
