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ast year, she was promoted to
Chief Curator and
Ulla R. Searing Curator
of Collections
at The Ringling.
According to the Ringling, Sarah’s
promotion makes her the first person to
hold the title of chief curator at the museum
in more than a decade. She’ll still
be the Ulla R. Searing Curator of Collections,
a position she has held since 2017.
And, she’ll also continue to be responsible
for the museum’s collections
of European and American paintings,
sculpture and works on paper from Antiquity
to 1900 CE. According to a Ringling
press release, “During her tenure
as Searing Curator of Collections, Cartwright
has expanded The Ringling’s
European collection and has completed
two parts of a multi-year project to reinstall
all 21 permanent collection galleries
of the Museum of Art.”
A curator curates, but what does that
actually mean? The Latin root, cura,
means “to take care” and that’s the
simple heart of it, though it gets much
more layered from there. Best to ask
the expert.
To curate is “to care for the collection.
It’s conservation, research and interpretation,”
she explains. Being part of
FSU (Florida State University), research,
Sarah explains, is a big part of her
job. Every day there are requests from
scholars or member of the public who
have questions. And there’s also writing
for scholarly publications and journals.
In curating an exhibition, it’s research
that “underpins” an exhibit.
And as for curating an exhibition, it’s
about “how to tell your story through
the artwork.” And the job also means
“ensuring [artworks’] longevity” while
also “making sure as many people as
possible have access - not just the public.”
Which means researchers, but can
also mean lending artwork to other museums
for their exhibits. Interestingly,
when art objects are loaned out from
The Ringling and sent to other museums,
Sarah travels with the artwork to
oversee the process.
Part of her research has been the letters
that John Ringling wrote. Though
there aren’t many, they suggest a person
who, she has found, “educated himself.
He was building a museum and was
thinking what he wanted to acquire.”
She and other curators “are often
shocked at how monumental and
expansive Ringling’s letters are. His
letters reveal as well that he knew what
he wanted and no one told him what
to do.”Ringling exhibitions are often
scheduled three to four years out.
Sometimes the museum has traveling
exhibitions on display and sometimes
an exhibit will be produced by The
Ringling. There are seven curators at
The Ringling, four of whom report to
Sarah and, she emphasizes, planning
exhibitions is a group decision involving
not just herself and other curators,
but also the museum’s executive director
and the collections staff and “has to
be a joint process.”
Professionally, she “cut her teeth”
in Italy back in 2002 while at NYU and
working on Villa La Pietra, a renaissance
villa in the hills outside Florence
that was bequeathed to the university.
Sarah did a complete reinstall (which
also means a deinstall was done first)
of the large collection. “It took a lot of
management skills, dealing with the
government, artists, an advisory committee,
architects - lots of stakeholders,”
she explains. And you’re doing it
all in a foreign country in a different
language.
Sarah’s background also includes
working at the Metropolitan Museum
of Art in New York City. In 2010, Sarah
came back to Sarasota and taught art
history at Ringling College.
She arrived at The Ringling in 2013 as
a postdoctoral curatorial research fellow.
She then took on the role of Grants
Administrator in The Ringling’s Development
department, raising more than
$1.5 million in three years in support of
exhibitions, conservation, and general
operations. She brought a wealth of experience
to The Ringling. “I understood
budgets, fundraising, cultivating members
and donors —the big picture.”
In 2017, when The Ringling started
an international search for the Ulla R.
Searing Curator of Collections, she applied
for the position and was selected.
So a curator is first and foremost
well-educated. Sarah has an M.A. and
Ph.D. in Art History from the Institute
of Fine Arts at New York University.
But a career as a curator has to start
somewhere.
Maybe it goes back to when Sarah’s
mother frequently took her to The
Ringling. Though she has studied and
worked in New York and Italy, Sarah is
totally local. She grew up in Fort Myers,
moved to Sarasota, and attended Pine
View School where she took advanced
placement art history that involved
studying at The Ringling.
She says she was “so lucky to have
grown up here. Every kid should be
able to have these opportunities.”
Studying art is learning “what it is to
be human and it makes a difference in
people’s lives.”
STORY and IMAGE: Louise Bruderle
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