Where the museum meets the midway

In Sarasota, Fla., the Ringling Museum's 30,600-square-foot Tibbals Learning Center featuring Howard Tibbals' magnificent miniature replica of the Ringling Circus and 5,700 circus posters is set to open with great fanfare on Jan. 14.

The master model builder and philanthropist donated $6.5 million to build and support the $16 million center, which presents circus history through interactive displays and revolving exhibitions.

"The Howard Bros. Circus not only shows what one can do with a lifetime passion," says John Wetenhall, executive director of the FSU-John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, "but shows how much one man with a huge heart can give back to the community that he loves — the American circus!"

The Ringling is the largest and most well-off of a handful of niche museums that dazzle contemporary audiences with artifacts from the golden age of the amusement industry. Yet all are in need of angel philanthropists and public funding just to make ends meet.

As Aaron Beebe, curator of the Coney Island Museum in Brooklyn, N.Y., points out, "Most museums are lucky if they can run on maybe 25% earned income. That's partly because you don't sell tickets for people to come and watch your curator."

In December, the state-owned Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wis., which is famed for its splendid collection of antique circus wagons, had $500 in its checking account, almost $300,000 in debt and a $22,000-a-month payroll. The crisis began in 2003, when Great Circus Parade Inc., a Milwaukee nonprofit that had raised the funds for a parade for 18 years as well as for the museum, bowed out because of changing giving patterns. Circus World suddenly found itself without $750,000 a year.

How much money is needed to make it through to the spring and summer season, when a Chinese circus organized by jar balancing virtuoso Gui Ming Meng is expected to draw crowds? "We need about $250,000 to get us to May. We're beating the bushes for donors," says Renee Boldt, chair of the museum's board. She has been running the show since the director and more than 20 staffers were let go.

The Wisconsin State Historical Society has stepped in with managerial support. "Our efforts include the search for public funds (for operating costs), and those conversations will continue until we find public funds, but it's not an easy road because there are many demands on state money," executive director Ellsworth H. Brown says. In the meantime, the state is chipping in nearly $100,000 to rehabilitate the Hippodrome building, which will host this summer's circus and save the cost of renting a big top.

Meanwhile, in Gibsonton, Fla., the International Independent Showmen's Foundation's museum board is ramping