From left to right: Drayton Saunders, Susan McLeod, Michael Saunders, Tim Jaeger, Andrew Ford. Provided photo.

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.

Starting with the arrival of John Ringling in 1911, the mural uses historical images and mixed media to create an easily digestible artistic timeline. “It’s a collage of historical images from 1945 to ‘65 and then we also added on three LED panel screens,” says Tim Jaeger, director of the Ringling College Galleries, who helped create the mural wall. “On one panel is a documentary with Michael Saunders on the significance of what we’re doing with this initiative. On the second is a collection of advertisements that ran in the Sarasota Arts Review from 1950 to ‘59 that features a lot of the original Sarasota artist colony artists, and the third panel features a collection of additional artworks—we wanted a digital component to the mural that we could continually update.”

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.

For Jaeger, this three part initiative is about more than just the preservation and celebration of the visual arts history in Sarasota. From 1945-65, Sarasota’s artistic community flourished because of an intense spirit of collaboration. “The larger message underneath this is that we all need to work together and that when we understand and listen and work alongside each other, good things happen,” says Jaeger. “Sustainability happens and Sarasota becomes a healthier place for all of us in general.”

A Legacy in the Making, Michael Saunders & Company Downtown Office, 1605 Main St., #101, Sarasota.

From left to right: Drayton Saunders, Susan McLeod, Michael Saunders, Tim Jaeger, Andrew Ford. Provided photo.

To learn more click here