It’s good to see that the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center is actually re-engaging with its illustrious past, beginning with an exhibition titled “A People’s History of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center.” Curated by Pat Musick, it opened on Dec. 6 and will be open through January. It’s designed to include public contributions; “stories, events, memories and other aspects of its long and complex story.” Pat will be in the gallery from 5 to 6:30 p.m. on Dec. 20 and Jan. 11 and on Jan. 17 at noon to 3 p.m.
Admission is free on those days. You can write your contributions on cards in the gallery, and Pat “will transcribe them and add them to the walls throughout the installation.”
According to Pat, “This is part of the process toward the reinstallation of selections from the permanent collection, scheduled to open in September 2025.”
Opened in 1936, the Fine Arts Center was financed and created by three powerful and visionary women; Julie Penrose, Alice Bemis Taylor and Betty Hare. They wanted a building and a school that would eclipse anything in the American West, let alone stuffy old Colorado Springs. FAC’s now-iconic building was designed by John Gaw Meem and occupied the site that was once the Penrose residence and had housed the Broadmoor Art Academy.
During the next two decades, the FAC hosted, hired and exhibited artists who had or were soon to create national reputations, including Lawrence Barrett, Edgar Britton, Mary Chenoweth, Adolf Dehn, Ethel and Jennie Magafan, Peppino Mangravite, Archie Musick, Francis Drexel Smith (bias alert: Smith was my grandfather) Lew Tilley and George van der Sluis.
I’m neither a connoisseur nor a hoarder – just a guy who dislikes bare walls and loves art.
Boardman Robinson, a nationally renowned painter/socialist/cartoonist, was the Art School Director, while Paul Parker served as Museum Director from 1936-1945.
As a kid growing up in the ‘40s and ‘50s, I loved hanging out with my grandfather and his artist friends. Absent talent, I became a self-appointed connoisseur – but one who believed in all the artists I met. I put together the beginnings of an art collection, which I stored with my mother while I was sailing and scamming. Returning for good in 1981, I built a collection that now includes all of my childhood heroes. They’re not masterpieces, they’re not worth much and they’re largely forgotten by today’s collectors.
Yet to my ageing eyes, they seem vivid and alive. Take Tabor Utley’s untitled painting (circa 1950) of an artist confronted with the future, walking toward a supersized group of geometric abstracts. I love it, but there’s a slight tear in the canvas and it needs restoration – but it’ll cost a lot, and I’m used to it as is.
Some have inscriptions. A Robinson lithograph of the Garden of the Gods is signed “Happy Christmas to Marka from Sally & Mike.” And all have stories – some belonged to parents and grandparents, others were acquired at local galleries, and many were picked up at garage sales and auctions.
And yeah, I’m neither a connoisseur nor a hoarder – just a guy who dislikes bare walls and loves art. And I always imagined that one day I’d find an unrecognized masterpiece at a sidewalk sale, sell it for a million and move to a bigger house so I could have more room for inexpensive mid-century art. Meanwhile, there’s room for a couple of pieces above the closet door in the small upstairs bedroom, if I can just get somebody to drag the stepladder up the circular stairwell and hang them. Not me, though!