An interview with John Waters

For their 5oth segment, Springs Culture Cast covered the Fine Arts Center's Extremely Grand Opening; touring our inaugural traveling exhibition, The Eclectic Eye: Pop and Illusion - Selections from the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, as well as interviewing filmmaker John Waters:

Gazette: FAC opens with a bang

The Gazette's Emily Voigt reviewed the 14th annual Masterpiece Gala.

“I was more excited about this than my prom,” said Bettina Swigger, who manages the Summer Arts Festival at Colorado College.

Swigger gushed about the intimacy of the building and the high quality of the exhibitions. “It feels like you’re going over to a ritzy friend’s house and they happen to have a lot of art,” she said.

In fact, Billie Milam Weisman, the director and curator of the Weisman Collection of pop and illusionist art, said she had been overseeing the hanging of the traveling exhibition in the second-floor galleries herself.

A gray-haired woman stood studying the results in the cavernous El Pomar Gallery. It was Nancy Wirth, the daughter of the building’s original architect, John Gaw Meem.

“It’s so fabulous,” said Wirth, explaining that she’s emotionally attached to her father’s work and had only now come to see the new wing. “I think he’s up there smiling,” she said.

'Colorado & Company' features the FAC

On August 3, a segment of 'Colorado & Company' on Denver's 9 News featured the Fine Arts Center's expansion and renovation. Dr. Michael De Marsche discusses the building's history and future, as well as this weekend's grand opening events.
Click here to watch.

The FAC hits Times Square!

It's like MOMA in the mountains.
The newly expanded Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center.
csfineartscenter.org

Mark Arnest, The Gazette: "Amazing"

The Gazette gave the FAC unprecedented coverage with a 1A story, online interactives and a first-ever "State of the Arts" special section.

· As opening nears, backers predict ‘wow’ moments
· Local artists give nod of approval to new wing
· Director made dramatic changes, and quickly
· Interactive Map of new FAC galleries
· State of the Arts overview
· Thomas Hoving: The man behind the big art show
· Alan Osburn: City offers plenty of variety
· Schedule of Events

More Denver media reviews of FAC expansion

>> Mary Chandler, Rocky Mountain News: “Superb” "A Harmonious expansion"

>> Cheryl Meyers, 5280 Magazine: “A perfect centerpiece to a day trip in Colorado Springs”

· Springing to Life: The renovated Fine Arts Center makes Colorado Springs worth another visit (full-page article with five photos not available online)

>> Denver Post, Colorado Sunday: “If it's true that nothing succeeds like excess, the three Dale Chihuly chandeliers practically guarantee that the new two-story wing of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, opening this week, will be a contender for a future round of world wonders.”

· Lighten up! The Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center

Michael Paglia of Westword: "Magical"

“During construction, Tryba also oversaw various improvements and restorations to the Meem, such as the careful and excellently carried out refurbishing of the spectacular theater and the removal of the offensive and ugly wheelchair ramps that had been added to the El Pomar Corridor. The elegant space, restored to its original splendor, hierarchically descends in stages, lending the area a ceremonial presence while also following the contours of the hillside on which the building sits. The ramps are now tucked away in what had been a set of galleries on the south side of the El Pomar, where new restrooms and a bar, the Deco Lounge, have been also located. For the first time in memory, the windows in these spaces, with their stunning aluminum elements, have been opened up, and the effect, in the Deco Lounge in particular, is magical.”

Well Done: The new Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center expansion gives plenty of reasons to applaud.

Denver Post: Running Lines with Joel Grey

Denver Post theater critic John Moore interviews theater legend (Cabaret, Chicago, Wicked) Joel Grey, who will be a special guest on Aug. 4 at the Fine Arts Center’s Extremely Grand Opening. Dr. Michael De Marsche will talk with Joel Grey on stage about everything from Cabaret and Wicked to his latest career as a photographer.

Tickets are still available for all of our special guest appearances! Buy tickets online or call 719.634.5583.

Listen to the Denver Post podcast here.

Gazette: The man behind the big art show

Michael De Marsche has introduced Colorado Springs to the big honking art exhibition: Chihuly, Warhol, Peter Max — shows with mass appeal. It’s appropriate that in choosing his first speaker for the Fine Arts Center’s reopening, the center’s president and CEO went for the guy who invented the blockbuster art show: Thomas Hoving. Read the complete article here.

Bruce Guenther praises FAC expansion: "Masterful and exciting"

Bruce Guenther, the nationally-renowned Chief Curator of the Portland Art Museum, recently lectured at the Fine Arts Center and had this to say about the new addition:

“The Fine Arts Center expansion is one of the most masterful and exciting remodeling projects I have seen in recent years. The new gallery spaces are beautifully proportioned and elegantly restrained in their detailing…a perfect setting for the collections.

"The sensitivity with which the Center and its important historic rooms have been restored and extended with the new addition speaks volumes to me about the value placed on heritage and the future for the arts in Colorado Springs.

"I congratulate the leadership of the Center and their architect, David Tryba, for bringing this venerable institution and its magnificent collections into the new century in such grand style.”

More Early Reviews
John Hazlehurst of the Colorado Springs Business Journal wrote on his blog: "Tryba's addition is … both a subtle, perfectly rendered, and utterly sympathetic addition to John Gaw Meem's great masterpiece and, amazingly, a transcendent piece of architecture in its own right."

"Conclusion: a triumph that few of us could have imagined before Mike DeMarsche arrived almost exactly four years ago. Better still, it should cure the local arts community of Denver envy. The new FAC is an infinitely better, more user-friendly, and more beautiful building than the renovated Denver Art Museum … " The full article can be found here.

The front page banner headline of the Woodmen/Cheyenne Edition (July 20) was "In a word, spectacular!" Written by Dave Vickers, it begins with "Colorado Springs should get ready to be amazed." The full article can be found here.

John Waters' Hairspray comes full circle

Hairspray was a successful movie for director John Waters in 1988; and then was adapted into a very successful Broadway musical in 2002. Now another incarnation, starring John Travolta in the role originated by Waters’ regular, Divine, and featuring Mr. Waters in a memorable cameo, will be released, as a musical movie, on July 20. And Waters' film, Cry-Baby, is being reworked into a musical for the stage, debuting at the La Jolla Playhouse in November. John Waters is one of many very special guests attending the FAC Extremely Grand Opening Aug. 2-5.

Alexander Calder in Focus at MCA Chicago

Alexander Calder, an influential artist credited for inventing the mobile, and who designed and built set pieces for stage productions at the original 1936 Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center grand opening, will be featured at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago in "Alexander Calder in Focus" from July 28, 2007 – April 2008. Calder is one of many fascinating and talented personalities who have shaped FAC history.

Hoving pens Picasso article for L.A. Times

Thomas Hoving, a very special guest at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center's Extremely Grand Opening, Aug. 2-5, penned a story in the Los Angeles Times recently entitled, "Nothing Like This Picasso."

"PABLO PICASSO's great "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" is 100 years old this spring," writes Hoving. "Starting Wednesday, New York's Museum of Modern Art will show it after a painstaking cleaning, along with nine rarely seen pre-studies.

"I remember my first thought on seeing it for the first time. "Ugly!" The painting exploded in my eyes like some kind of pink, blue and beige bomb. I was shocked by its teeth-shattering primitiveness and downright brutality."

Read the whole story here. | Buy Thomas Hoving tickets here.

KRCC: Springs art scene at a tipping point

The FAC’s Tariana Navas-Nieves participated in a panel for the “Incubator” series at the UCCS Gallery of Contemporary Art on April 12. KRCC’s Noel Black was there, and he filed this report. Has Colorado Springs reached a tipping point? The FAC and the Extremely Grand Opening in August were mentioned as catalysts to move the arts scene forward in the right direction. “That’s what I’m hoping that the Fine Arts Center will really become a synonym or symbolic of a new era, a new renaissance in the arts in the Colorado Springs area,” said Navas-Nieves.
Download (5:51) | Listen:

KRCC is having their annual open house this Saturday and Sunday from 1-3 p.m. at the station at 912 N. Weber. They’ll have BBQ, bands and a bounce-house and it’s all free.

Watch Waters at Work

FAC Extremely Grand Opening guest and iconoclastic film director John Waters is the host of Court TV's 'Til Death Do Us Part, a "humorous look at marriages gone very wrong." Very wrong indeed. Each case examines a doomed marriage in which one spouse murders the other. “I’ve always been jealous of Vincent Price’s career,” said Waters, “Maybe now that he’s dead, I can hijack it.” Read more about John Waters.