A Cultural Kidnapping: East meets West

Bill Reed and Noel Black recently wrote in the Gazette about a cultural experiment involving "downtowners who don’t like to venture east of Wahsatch Avenue" and "a group of east-siders who rarely travel downtown."
The FAC was prominently featured in giving the east-siders a taste of the cultural cornucopia downtown Colorado Springs has to offer.
“I feel like I’m in a different world because it’s nothing like the world I live in,” said one east-sider, Heidi Kelly, about the FAC's recent Botero exhibit.
Check out the article for an interesting perspective of what Colorado Springs has to offer from the east and the west side.

"How to Move a 4,000 Lb. Sculpture" on KRCC

In their "ongoing quest to take you behind the scenes of everything," KRCC's The Big Something posted a new audio slideshow about installation of the huge sculptures for The Baroque World of Fernando Botero, narrated by curator Tariana Navas-Nieves. One fan commented that this was the "best installment of this series yet." Watch and listen here.

Video from the Opening Night of Botero

Using a FlipVideo camera given to the Fine Arts Center by the Bee Vradenburg Foundation, I recorded the happenings of the Opening Celebration for The Baroque World of Fernando Botero. Eschewing the interviewer-centric approach of other local arts video enterprises, I instead let the video doing the talking, utilizing the 'shaky cam' technique to capture the gritty underbelly of the affair, a technique made famous by late 1990s television crime dramas. In the middle of it all, I met a man who attended the FAC Grand Opening in 1936. Watch and enjoy.

Botero exhibition getting some ink

The Fine Arts Center’s exhibition, The Baroque World of Fernando Botero, is causing a stir, featured on the cover of The Independent, the cover of the Go!, the top story on the Denver Post’s Entertainment section and on page 1A of today’s Gazette. The FAC hasn’t been on both local covers in the same week since the Extremely Grand Opening in August of 2007.

The Opening Celebration is tonight from 5-8 p.m. We invite you all to join us. FAC members can attend the Opening and every day of the exhibit for free.

The Independent
“Their breadth is stunningly majestic. Years from now, locals will still talk about the FAC hosting this show.”

Denver Post
“But Los Angeles' and New York's loss is Colorado's gain, because this exhaustive exhibition makes clear that it is time for a major reconsideration of this doggedly independent-minded artist … Indeed, the Botero that emerges via this exhibition, which will surely draw visitors from along the Front Range, is a surprisingly complex … “

Gazette
“As you walk through the three sprawling galleries, it feels much like the Louvre - room upon room of palace-ready paintings … “

Westword
“ … formidable, big-boned, larger than life and literally two tons of fun.”