Sarasota is the home of Florida West Coast Symphony, founded by Ruth Cotton Butler in 1949. It has a three-week Sarasota Music Festival. Other attractions include the Sarasota Ballet; Sarasota Opera; Florida Studio Theatre; The Sarasota Players; and other musical, dance, artistic, and theatrical venues.In 1926 A. B. Edwards built a theater which could be adapted for either vaudeville performances or movie screenings. In the early 1950s, the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art purchased a historic Italian theater, the Asolo. A. Everett "Chick" Austin, the museum's first director, arranged the purchase and reassembly of the theater for performances of plays and opera. The theater was built in 1798 and disassembled during the 1930s. Adolph Loewi, a Venetian collector and dealer, had purchased the theater and stored its parts until the purchase and shipment to Sarasota for the museum. Later the theater was used for a foreign film club. When the club expanded, it built its own theater at Burns Court near downtown Sarasota.
In the 1960s the Van Wezels enabled the city to build a performing arts hall on the bay front. The auditorium, the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall, was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin team under the direction of his wife, Olga (Olgivanna) Lazovich Hinzenburg. She selected its purple color.
Later, Stuart Barger designed and oversaw the construction of another Asolo Theater. It is a multi-theater complex, located further east on the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art property. It was built around a rococo, historic Scottish theater, which had been shipped to Florida. The new complex provides venues and facilities for students of Florida State University's theater arts and film program.
Since 1998, the city has annually hosted the Sarasota Film Festival. The festival attracts independent films from around the world. It has become one of Florida's largest film festivals.