A headline in a recent issue of the London-based culture magazine Apollo called the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art “The Greatest Art Museum on Earth.” Circus impresario John Ringling would have loved the hyperbole, not to mention the allusion to his Greatest Show on Earth.

But while the Ringling may not be ready to join the ranks of the Louvre or the Metropolitan Museum, the institution has undergone a dramatic, $76 million transformation in the past several years.

“We have doubled in size, making us among the 20 largest art museums in North America,” says executive director John Wetenhall. “We’ve gone from being a local museum to a truly national and international museum. And it’s happened twice as fast as I thought it could.”

Since 2006, four new buildings have opened on the 66-acre Ringling grounds. The Tibbals Learning Center, an expansion of the circus collection, is the home of a captivating model-circus display, as well as a showplace for circus posters, photographs and props. The new Visitors Pavilion houses a chic restaurant, Treviso, and the restored Historic Asolo Theater, an 18th-century playhouse once located in an Italian castle. The 68,000-square-foot Education/Conservation building contains an expanded conservation lab and art library.

Perhaps most importantly, the art museum’s just-opened Ulla R. and Arthur F. Searing Wing provides an additional 20,000 square feet of flexible exhibition space. There, touring shows and exhibits from the permanent collection can be displayed in an elegant, sophisticated environment.

The museum’s long history of neglect makes the changes at Ringling even more impressive. John Ringling bequeathed the museum and his mansion, Cà d’Zan, to the state of Florida at his death in 1936. But the complex was never adequately funded by state legislators, many of whom weren’t even aware they owned it.

The Ringling’s fortunes changed in 2000, when governance was transferred to Florida State University, and the legislature allocated $43 million for capital improvements. At the same time, the museum embarked on a major endowment campaign, which exceeded its goal of raising $50 million.

And the renaissance at Ringling is capturing the attention of the nation’s art community. In its latest issue, Museum News—a publication of the American Association of Museums—hailed the “remarkable rebirth and reinvention” that has made the Ringling “a world-class institution.”

Yet many Sarasota residents haven’t visited the museum in years. They still regard it as a musty place to drop off vacationing relatives on a rainy day. To whet your appetite to wander again among the Baroque paintings, the circus wagons and the banyan trees, what follows is a by-no-means-exhaustive list of new reasons to rediscover the Ringling.

See a Blockbuster Summer Show

Impressionism! The word causes even the most casual art enthusiast to salivate. So even though the Ringling has never presented a show with potential blockbuster appeal in the traditionally slower summer, large crowds are expected in the Ulla R. and Arthur F. Searing Wing starting June 16. That’s when a touring exhibit, Impressionists from the Brooklyn Museum of Art, begins a three-month stay in the new galleries. More than 40 landscape paintings by French and American artists, including Claude Monet, Gustav Corbet and Frederick Childe Hassam, are part of the exhibit.

Already up in the Searing wing is In Our Time, an exhibit of 150 iconic black-and-white photographs from the Magnum collection. Works by Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson and other renowned 20th-century photographers are represented in the show. Subjects range from war and political upheaval to portraits of Martin Luther King Jr., Marilyn Monroe and James Dean.

Designed by Yann Weymouth of HOK Architects, the Searing wing was inspired by never-completed plans by John Phillips, the architect John Ringling hired to design his museum in the 1920s. The addition’s exterior seamlessly extends the museum’s existing north loggia, with its classical arches and columns. But the new wing’s interior is strikingly contemporary, with movable walls, flexible lighting systems to accommodate a variety of shows, and elegant bamboo and white-oak flooring. And don’t miss the two “quiet rooms” at the southwest and northwest corners of the wing. These glass-enclosed cubes are the perfect spots to relax on a couch and reflect on what you’ve seen, or just stare through the trees at Sarasota Bay in the distance.

Get New Perspectives on Classic Paintings

When most visitors to the museum think of Peter Paul Rubens, they think of the massive Triumph of the Eucharist Biblical paintings in the high-ceilinged gallery where they begin their tour. But Stephen D. Borys, the museum’s curator of collections, wants visitors to see other sides of Rubens. That’s why the artist’s 1635 painting, Portrait of the Infante Ferdinand, is now displayed more prominently than it used to be in Gallery 13.