Expanded Fine Arts Center opens with a bang

Museums are usually quiet, prim places.

Not Friday night.

Nearly 700 people descended upon the newly expanded Fine Arts Center for the Masterpiece Gala, which sold out, for as much as $275 a head, before invitations could even be mailed.

The evening kicked off with a presentation honoring Kathy Loo and Buck Blessing, co-chairs of the capital campaign, which funded the expansion.

Michael De Marsche, the center’s president and chief executive officer, congratulated Colorado Springs on its new status as an artistic center. Gov. Bill Ritter described the expansion as “an exclamation point” on the Pikes Peak region’s commitment to the arts.

Then a sea of black-tie-clad guests flowed through the new wing, schmoozing, reveling and — gasp — eating in the expansive first-floor galleries.

Enjoying mahi-mahi and spiced tenderloin alongside local art enthusiasts were the week’s celebrity speakers.

Joel Grey,the Academy Award-winning actor from “Cabaret” and “Wicked,” said he was thrilled to be seated in a gallery devoted to Native American art, his favorite.

Overhead, glass artist Dale Chihuly’s nine-foot “Orange Hornet” chandelier glowed as if on fire.

“I’m dazzled. I’m really impressed,” said Grey. “This new wing is going to be a tremendous incentive for people to give from their collections.”

Madcap indie filmmaker John Waters tended to agree.

“You’re encouraging new people to be collectors,” he said as he stood surveying the glass corridor that extends to from the main entrance where a solid wall used to be.

“When I was about 7 years old, I went to the Baltimore Museum of Art and bought a Miró print for a dollar,” he said. “My little friend saw it and said, ‘That’s horrible!’ And that did it: I was hooked on art.”

Most of the gala attendees were not stars, however, but Colorado Springs residents giddy with enthusiasm.

“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.

After dinner, the band Phat Daddy & the Phat Horn Doctors began playing funk, soul and R&B classics in the courtyard. Dancing was expected to continue until midnight — at which time exhausted museum staffers would head home for a few hours' sleep.

The ribbon-cutting ceremony is scheduled for 10 a.m. today, commencing a weekend of special events and the museum’s official opening to the public.