Director made dramatic changes, and quickly

Colorado Springs was already a thriving artists’ community before the Broadmoor Art Academy — the Fine Arts Center’s precursor — was founded in 1919. The academy’s home was the former Penrose mansion at 30 W. Dale St., a site donated by Julie Penrose.

By 1931, the studio had outgrown its building. The idea of a new, multipurpose facility grew out of the partnership of Penrose with two other art patrons: Alice Bemis Taylor and Elizabeth Sage Hare.

Taylor wanted a place to exhibit her collection of American Indian and Hispanic art; Hare, the founder of Fountain Valley School, had strong connections in the art world, and was responsible for the hiring of both architect John Gaw Meem and the art school’s first director, artist Boardman Robinson.

Faced with demands as large as the lot was small, Meem came up with a creative solution: one of the world’s first multipurpose arts centers, with a single building housing an art school, a museum, a theater and a library.

The building, which cost nearly a million dollars, fused different architectural styles — art deco, territorial and pueblo — as well as different art forms.

Meem’s biographer, Bainbridge Bunting, called the center “undoubtedly Meem’s crowning achievement because of the size and complexity of the design and the consummate skill and taste with which it was achieved.”

The center opened in 1936 with a six-day celebration that included a lecture by architect Frank Lloyd Wright, a dance concert by Martha Graham and performances by violinist Albert Spalding and harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick. Alexander Calder designed the sets for a production of Manuel de Falla’s opera for puppets.

Those first years were the center’s glory years. World War II disrupted the art school as it did everything else, and a postwar revival was brief. Robinson’s health declined — he retired as director in 1947 and died five years later; there were budget issues; and interest in regional realism declined as abstract expressionism became the artistic style du jour.

The art school shrank dramatically in the late 1940s under director Mitch Wilder, who, wrote artist Archie Musick, “found decapitation an exhilarating sport.”

The center’s revival began in 1995, when David Turner took over as director. During his tenure, the center made strides both in increasing attendance and in reaching out to the local artistic community — though he’s also remembered for a controversial expansion plan that would have put Meem’s elegant facade behind glass.

But no one in the arts community was prepared for the torrent of change that began when Michael De Marsche was hired in 2003.

De Marsche made increasing attendance and membership his top priorities. He helped create the center’s first blockbuster exhibit, filling the museum with glass by Dale Chihuly and attracting nearly 80,000 people to the center. He followed that with popular exhibits of art by Andy Warhol and Peter Max.

Many in the local arts community felt ignored, and staff members left in droves. But even as De Marsche shook things up, he was returning the building to Meem’s original vision.

“Quite frankly, the building I found was a disgrace,” said De Marsche. “It was dilapidated.”

He removed boards from windows and skylights that had been dark for decades; he tore out the “Sacred Land” exhibit, which had been in place for 13 years, and, instead, displayed Taylor’s collection as modern art, the way she had intended.

The theater was renovated, and the FAC Modern opened downtown, keeping the center highly visible even while the galleries were closed for the expansion.

Of the differences between Turner and De Marsche, the most dramatic may simply be pace. When Turner announced he was leaving, he said one reason was that he didn’t want to spend five to eight years raising funds for an expansion.

In contrast, this expansion, both more ambitious and more expensive than the one Turner envisioned, is opening four years, almost to the day, from De Marsche’s arrival in Colorado Springs — and he didn’t even conclude that expansion was viable until well into his second year here.

“It really has been a giant leap,” said Kathy Loo, co-chairwoman of the capital campaign. “It’s not an evolution but a revolution.”