Installing Bransby's 'History of Navigation'

When you enter the Fine Arts Center for the NASA ART program (opening Dec. 18), the first space art you’ll see is Eric Bransby’s The History of Navigation mural in the Glass Corridor. It depicts significant moments from seafaring navigation to the future of cosmic navigation. The mural was commissioned in 1968 and captures the excitement and energy of the space race. Eric was working on this sequence of paintings a year before humans set foot on the moon in 1969, yet sections of the mural predict current aspects of exploration such as an orbiting telescope like Hubble and future initiatives such as permanent settlement of the moon.

Laurel Swab and Aaron Jakos are pictured installing one of the eight panels. To best protect the mural, we decided to hang it a bit higher than we usually would. It is on loan from the Air Force Academy, and originally hung around the interior of their planetarium’s atrium – that’s why the panels are slightly curved. Eric has always been interested in making his murals an extension of the existing architecture, and although we have them hung on a flat wall, the curved panels create an unexpected visual dynamic. Another unique aspect that you’ll notice on the mural is that Eric also created actual depth in each image by raising parts of the surfaces. This epic mural really sets the tone for the rest of the exhibition experience!

— Blake Milteer, Museum Director, Curator of American Art and the NASA ART exhibition

Photos from the Opening Celebration

We've posted photos on flickr from our Oct. 2 Opening Celebration for Personal Paradise, At the Foot of the Colorado Rockies, and BOLD!

FAC hauls in 13 Gazette 'best of' awards

The Fine Arts Center took home 13 'Best of' awards from the Gazette. Congratulations to all!

Best Art Museum
Fine Arts Center (Readers' Choice)
When it comes to the Fine Arts Center, Lee Bowers sums it up quite nicely: "Um. Wow!" After a $28.4 million renovation in 2006, the facility boasts both architect John Gaw Meem's stately Pueblo style and airy public spaces able to accommodate the enormous as well as the intimate. Voters cited the free admission days, Dale Chihuly's chandeliers, a solid permanent collection and ambitious traveling shows as reasons to visit again and again. "Better than the Denver Art Museum," wrote one fan, "who needs angled walls?"

Best Local Exhibit
Colorado Springs Abstract (Gazette Pick)
The scope of this 80-piece survey is ambitious - from turn-of-the-century experimentation to contemporary renderings. Sure, there are heavy hitters, such as the tasty Motherwells you can spot from the broad doorway of the Fine Arts Center's El Pomar Gallery. But the real treat is to see local artists Betty Ross, Holly Parker, Bill Burgess and others hang in this august setting.

Best Museum Exhibit
Life as a Legend: Marilyn Monroe (Readers' Choice)
Despite a year of blockbusters at the Fine Arts Center - from an impressionists show in January to Pablo Picasso in July - this tightly focused traveling exhibit stood out with voters. Not unlike the delicious Ms. Monroe herself. The April 2008 offering included 300 Monroe-related photographs and works by such artists as Andy Warhol, Richard Avedon and Henri Cartier-Bresson as well as 15 local artists invited to participate in the show. It was fun, sexy, sad and, ultimately, a testament to our obsession with the unattainable.

Best Traveling Exhibit
Mikel Glass: The Discarded (Gazette Pick)
It's big ideas in small packages. Sometimes literally. In this sprawling exhibition, the New York artist creates say-what facsimiles of throw-away objects as well as exquisitely painted canvases that play with notions of realism and the nature of art. All of this at our local museum. Amazing.

Best Use of Multimedia
Mikel Glass: The Discarded (Gazette Pick)
It's hard to get your mind around New York realist Mikel Glass' curious work, which ran Jan. 17-April 19 at the Fine Arts Center. That's especially true of the series of handmade boxes that ape throw-away objects, such as express-mail boxes, with such detail that you can't tell the difference. Recognizing that the best convincer - touching it and seeing the wooden back - wasn't possible, the arts center put together a smart array of online and gallery media - including a slide show, a video on how he makes these pieces and an interview with the artist - to telegraph just how artful this heady work really is.

Best Artist You Do Not Understand
Tom McElroy (Gazette Pick)
If you walked into Tom McElroy's recent exhibition at the FAC Modern, "Atomic Elroy's Hometown," you may have been puzzled. But you were unlikely to miss that, like much of his work, this video and installation piece is smart and meaningful, the pearl inside a particularly petulant oyster. To understand McElroy, you needed to spend time with the piece, wading into his complicated relationship with his hometown, Colorado Springs, and his love affair with the slippery nature of dadaism.

Best Musical
The Full Monty (Readers' Choice)
Fans couldn't stop laughing. They loved the singing, acting and special "ladies night" production. Some thought it should have gotten even more exposure, if you know what we mean.

Best Musical
Disney's Beauty and the Beast (Gazette Pick)
Colorful costumes, a sparkling cast and one show-stopping number after another combined to captivate adults while introducing a new, young audience to the magic of theater.

Best Costumes
Disney's Beauty and the Beast (Gazette Pick)
How do you bring a wardrobe, a candelabra and a houseful of everyday objects to life? Easily, if you've got Elizabeth Fry's keen imagination and eye for detail. Why, she made even the Beast endearing.

Best Choreography
The Full Monty (Gazette Pick)
Mary Ripper Baker's dance numbers are always a joy to watch, but in this testosterone-driven musical she really outdid herself, rocking the house with her contagiously energetic choreography.

Best Youth Show
Working (Gazette Pick)
Recognized for its intensive training program in the dramatic arts, The Youth Rep showed with this ode to American workers that it could produce work as polished and mature as any professional theater company.

Best Romantic Restaurant
Cafe 36 (Gazette Pick)
When this restaurant opened in the wake of the nifty Fine Arts Center expansion, it served some pretty food that was also pretty bad. But since Garden of the Gods Gourmet took over, the cafe which is now open for dinner and happy hour tapas as well as lunch, it has landed among the top lunch spots in town. The limited but creative menu is complemented by a romantic setting, particularly on the patio overlooking Pikes Peak.

Best Volunteer
Mary Lou Roesler, FAC docent (Readers' Choice)

Gazette: Puzzling, dazzling abstract art

The Gazette reviewed Colorado Springs Abstract. T.D. Mobley-Martinez writes, "There are works here that are simply beautiful, a quality that for some viewers has meaning enough. Dawn Wilde's recent large-scale paintings are a riot of color, movement and organic form. Like Wilde's work, Corey Drieth's gemlike pieces of pigment on wood planks are strangely poetic, but with the quiet simplicity of a Zen koan. The same is true of Holly Parker's imagistic imprints of found pools of oil and dirt, called "Untitled (Roman Buses I-IIIV)."

"At the center of it all, Bill Burgess' sculptures demand attention. Some are gritty; some are sleek and invite a caress. Exquisite."

Colorado Culture Cast features Mikel Glass

Colorado Culture Cast's Craig Richardson visited Mikel Glass The Discarded as the exhibition was being installed and spoke with curator Blake Milteer, FAC Board of Trustees member Ron Brasch and the artist, Mikel Glass. Watch the video here.

The Opening Celebration for Mikel Glass The Discarded, as well as Colorado Springs Abstract and The Taos Society of Artists, will be held this Friday, Feb. 27, from 5 to 8 p.m.

Atomic Elroy interview on KRCC

Listen to an interview with Tom McElroy (aka Atomic Elroy) from KRCC. ATOMICELROY'S HOMETOWN - an exhibition of video, installation and performance art - is on display now at the FAC MODERN, and the opening celebration is 5-8 p.m. this Friday, Feb. 6.

Download (3:55) Listen on KRCC

Video from Mikel Glass' studio

Want to find out how Mikel Glass creates his amazingly-realistic sculptures? Watch an in-depth feature on the artist and his work from his New York studio. This 14-minute video from TheGreatNude.tv is an expanded version of the film playing in our gallery alongside Mikel Glass The Discarded, now on exhibit at the Fine Arts Center.

Denver Post reviews Walt Kuhn exhibit

“A new exhibition at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center makes a powerful case for a reconsideration of this modernist,” writes Denver Post art critic Kyle MacMillan in a review of Walt Kuhn: Imaginary History of the West, an exhibit on view at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center on Sunday. “His zeal for the subject matter is obvious in the unashamedly romanticized vision and swashbuckling energy he brought to these depictions. Compared with much of Kuhn's later output … these works are rendered with bright, fauvist-influenced colors and black highlights and loose, highly animated strokes. (D)on't miss this long-overdue opportunity to see these modern masterworks.”

Designing Women Opening Video

On Sept. 27, Colorado Culture Cast joined us for the opening of the Designing Women exhibition. Craig Richardson interviews curator Tariana Navas-Nieves and Art Collectors Jill A. Wiltse and H. Kirk Brown III:

Marilyn Monroe Exhibition Opening

Springs Culture Cast was at the opening celebration of Life as a Legend: Marilyn Monroe on May 2 ... watch footage from opening night of the exhibition!

A visit to Altered Space

Watch Springs Culture Cast's visit to the latest exhibition at the FAC MODERN, Altered Space: 21st Century Installation Art...

Altered Space media previews from Gazette, Westword

Bold art alters space
FAC curators take on unpredictable exhibit
By Mark Arnest, The Gazette (Feb. 1)

• “Altered Space: 21st Century Installation Art” is the riskiest exhibition the Fine Arts Center has hosted in years, say curators Blake Milteer and Tariana Navas-Nieves. “We’re committed to balancing our traditional role as an anchor for the community and going out on a limb,” Milteer said. “Part of what a curator does is create a beautiful, cohesive exhibit,” he said. “This is different.”

Rooms with a View
FAC MODERN dedicates a show to installation art
By Susan Froyd, Westword (Jan. 31)

• “(Matt Barton) says, ‘I want the overall sense of the work to be positive, fantastic and wonderful while being woven with what can, on the surface, be thought of as dark.’ That means his room might be haunted by stuffed animals and found animated video clips or, somehow, a tornado. Hi-tech and lo-tech, heaven and hell.”

Interview with Altered Space artist Gwen Laine

Gwen Laine has lived in Denver since 1975. She earned her BFA from the University of Colorado, where she studied photography, sculpture and art history. Her work has been exhibited throughout the U.S. and has been published internationally ... more

Interview with Altered Space artist Matt Barton

Matt Barton currently teaches 3D art making for the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs’ Visual and Performing Arts department. Following brief stints as a Chuck E. Cheese dancing rat and Victoria Secret shop stock boy, Barton spent a year in Italy as an artist apprentice. He earned his Masters in Fine Arts in 2006 from the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh ... more

Interview with Altered Space artist Christina Marsh

Christina Marsh, from Lindenhurst, Ill., is currently in her second year as the Riley Scholar in Residency at Colorado College. She earned her Masters in Fine Arts at the University of Illinois, Champaign/Urbana. Her works have been exhibited in many venues including the Schmucker Gallery at Gettsyburg (Pa.) College and Eastern Illinois University’s Tarble Art Center. She also participated in the Mobilivre traveling exhibition that was shown in 14 states. Her work has incorporated food, photography and prints ... more

Denver news features Impressionist show

Watch the video featuring Impressionist and Modern Masters as a 'Colorado Getaway' by Denver's CBS 4 ... click here.

Over the River ... The Rocky covers Christo and Jean Claude visit to the Springs

Christo’s river project is still flowing
By Mary Voetz Chandler, Rocky Mountain News (Jan. 26)

“An exhibition on Over the River, including drawings, anchors, fabric and other objects related to the project, will open in October at the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C. The show will travel, including a visit to the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center in 2011.”

Impressionist and Modern Masters tour

Learn more about the Impressionist and Modern Masters as Springs Culture Cast tours the exhibition with FAC Curator Blake Milteer...

John Updike on Georges Seurat

Celebrated writer John Updike reviewed the Georges Seurat MOMA exhibition in The New York Review for Books (Jan. 17), writing, "Impressionism, our impression is, proceeded by instinct, its stabs of high color pursuing what the eyes of Monet and Renoir and Pissarro and Sisley found in the open air, as sunlight's spectrum flitted across the sight of haystacks, poppy-dotted fields, and rippled water. Analysis was left to Post-Impressionism, whose varied masters, with a greater or lesser degree of programmatic determination, put forward terms for their own art and the art of the future. Neither Cezanne nor Van Gogh was more resolutely theoretical than Georges Seurat."

• Impressionist and Modern Masters
• Sunday in the Park with George

Bon Vivant: "The mastery of light, color and line"

In the January edition of Bon Vivant magazine, writer Noel Black reviews the Impressionist and Modern Masters exhibition, saying it "satisfies like a weekend trip to New York."

"Using colored walls to denote the three separate eras in the chronology, Blake Milteer and the FAC curatorial staff hone done an excellent job of creating visual moods around the periods they define: regal burgundy for the pre-impressionist era, a brooding green for the impressionists and a sunny yellow for the modernists. The works themselves are, without hyperbole, some of the finest examples of their times."

2007 Fine Arts Center highlight reel

Check out our 2007 Year-in-Review video, featuring all the highlights of the past year ... the grand opening of our new building, award-winning theatre productions, groundbreaking exhibitions, special guests and more!

Denver Post: Center's treasures revealed

The Fine Arts Center was featured on the front page of the Denver Post A&E section Sunday, complete with four articles and eight photos. About the FAC Permanent Collection, art critic Kyle MacMillan wrote, "The return of a little more than 200 permanent works to public view is among the most exciting aspects of the arts center's newly opened addition ... No comprehensive story of Colorado art, which for much of the 20th century was centered in Colorado Springs, can be told without including selections from the arts center's extensive collection."

"A major boost to those holdings came with the July announcement that 67 paintings from the extraordinary Colorado Springs collection of Katherine and the late Dusty Loo would be given to the institution. A selection of 27 pieces is on view.

"The Loos were highly discriminating in their purchases, managing to find a, if not the, definitive example of virtually every artist represented in their collection."

Center's treasures revealed: Rediscovering the Collection
Curating the Future: What's next for the Fine Arts Center
Miro and Monet: Impressionist and Modern Masters

Impressionist and Modern Masters wallpapers

Have you seen the Impressionist and Modern Masters exhibition at the FAC? If you have, you know that it includes one masterpiece after another. Almost too many. You need to take your time and study each work of art. Until your next visit to the FAC, download a free wallpaper to load on your computer ... Degas, Monet and LeBrun ... for your viewing enjoyment.

Cheyenne Edition: 'Exhibit ... will make your heart swell'

On Dec. 14, Cheyenne/Woodmen Editon columnist Lisa Matthews wrote of the Impressionist and Modern Masters exhibition:

"The newest exhibit at the Fine Arts Center will make your heart swell with pride. In a word, it is simply, “Wow!” Even the FAC security guards concur, “This is our finest exhibition bar none.” And they should know, it is their job to keep these million-dollar masterpieces safe.

"A painting by Claude Monet first greets you at the entrance. From there, you’ll find works by many of the major artists from the past 300 years including Picasso, Degas, Renoir, Gauguin, Matisse, Pollock and even Georgia O’Keeffe and Wassily Kandinsky. An oversized painting of Marie Antoinette – in its original frame and once hung in the Palace of Versailles – will virtually blow you away.

“I’d expect to be in Paris or New York, okay even Denver to see such works of art,” said one proud attendee. Truly something Colorado Springs has worked hard to achieve. “We’ve transitioned from a place with dust in the corners to something as elegant as this,” said Ann Winslow, a past FAC board of trustee member.

Gazette: New FAC exhibition is 'jaw-dropping'

Fine Arts Center masters the masters
Gazette // Mark Arnest (Dec. 6)

If the sheer size of the Fine Arts Center expansion and its first post-expansion exhibit made a good impression, get ready to be really impressed.

Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Pablo Picasso, Claude Lorrain: With its jaw-dropping, masterpiece-packed new exhibit “Impressionist and Modern Masters,” the Fine Arts Center solidifies its new position as a major player in the state’s art scene.

Words of wisdom from Impressionist and Modern Masters

In preparation for this Friday's Opening Celebration of Impressionist and Modern Masters, the FAC Blog has gathered quotes -- words of wisdom, if you will -- from some of the artists featured in the exhibition.

I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need.
Auguste Rodin

Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.
Edgar Degas

In art, all who have done something other than their predecessors have merited the epithet of revolutionary; and it is they alone who are masters.
Paul Gauguin

Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.
Claude Monet

I do not judge, I only chronicle.
John Singer Sargent

Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing.
Camille Pissarro

I think that if you shake the tree, you ought to be around when the fruit falls to pick it up.
Mary Cassatt

The pain passes, but the beauty remains.
Pierre Auguste Renoir

Everything starts from a dot.
Wassily Kandinsky

All good ideas arrive by chance.
Max Ernst

When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.
Georgia O'Keeffe

There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.
Henri Matisse

New needs need new techniques. And the modern artists have found new ways and new means of making their statements... the modern painter cannot express this age, the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio, in the old forms of the Renaissance or of any other past culture.
Jackson Pollock

Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.
Pablo Picasso

When I see a head from a great distance, it ceases to be a sphere and becomes an extreme confusion falling down into the abyss.
Alberto Giacometti

I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music.
Joan Miro

RMN: Eclectic exhibit benefits from center's expansion

Rocky Mountain News art and architecture columnist Mary Voelz Chandler reviewed "The Eclectic Eye: Pop and Illusion" in today's paper.

"In short, the addition that opened in August, designed by David Owen Tryba Architects, offers beautiful spaces to view art, whether the more traditional Western pieces in "Colorado Sublime," or the numerous glass sculptures (and bright orange chandelier) the center acquired from artist Dale Chihuly, or the adventurous and provocative pieces from Weisman. It helps that the detailing is pristine, and the flow simple and direct."

"In "Eclectic," organized with a fair amount of wit by the late collector's wife, Billie Milam Weisman, the overall effect is, fittingly, a little bit of everything."

Read the complete review here.

KRCC interview FAC's Sylvester Smith on jazz

Sylvester Smith, known as 'Smitty', is a long-time Fine Arts Center employee and Colorado Springs native who has seen many of the jazz legends from Portraits from the Golden Age of Jazz perform live. He recently shared his memories while touring the FAC MODERN exhibition with KRCC's Kate Dawson. Listen to KRCC's interview (5:56)

Gottlieb Opening Night video

Portraits from the Golden Age of Jazz: Photographs of William P. Gottlieb opened at the FAC MODERN May 4. The exhibit features 71 photos of giants of jazz captured on film by a rookie photographer in the 1930-40s. New FAC curator Blake Milteer is interviewed for this Opening Night video from Springs Culture Cast:

Gazette: Jazz Visions

In Mark Arnest’s preview of the Gottlieb photography exhibit from May 3, new FAC curator Blake Milteer talked about Gottlieb’s ardent love of jazz, which enabled him to gain his subject’s confidence. “The show is about his close-knit relationship with the performers, before, during, after they were performing,” said Milteer. “They’re not studio shots. They’re reflective of the energy of the performance.”

Katrina Gallery Tour

New Orleans gallery owner and exhibition organizer Arthur Roger with Louisiana artists Willie Birch, Jacqueline Bishop and Dawn Dedeaux, provide a room-by-room narration for Katrina: Catastrophe and Catharsis. Download the first-ever FAC MODERN audio tour on your mp3 player, then come downtown to view the exhibit. Experience Katrina through the eyes – and words – of the artists!
Download (1:03:07) | Listen:

Dr. Michael De Marsche’s NPR interview

On March 7, Louisiana artist Jacqueline Bishop interviewed FAC President and CEO Dr. Michael De Marsche about Katrina: Catastrophe and Catharsis for New Orleans’ NPR station 89.9 WWNO.
Download (10:38) | Listen:

Storm of Creativity

Mary Voelz Chandler reviewed the Katrina show in Friday’s Rocky Mountain News … “In short, "Catastrophe and Catharsis" is a prime example of the natural inclination of artists to create, even as the world seems to blow apart.” She concludes, “(Katrina) … has moments of pure power, tempered by revelation, sadness and the opportunity to see art that carries the personality of an American city unlike any other.” Read the whole review here.

Katrina Opening March 9, 2007

Katrina: Catastrophe and Catharsis, the latest exhibition at the FAC MODERN, opened March 9 and runs through April 29, 2007. Watch the Opening Night video from Springs Culture Cast:

2005 Chihuly TV Commercial

View the television commercial from our blockbuster exhibition, Chihuly at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center from 2005. This historic exhibit of paint and glass caused an explosion of art interest in the Rocky Mountain region with nearly 80,000 visitors attending; the FAC membership tripled in that one memorable year. Our newly expanded gallery space at the FAC will feature $2 million worth of Chihuly art from our permanent collection.