A new state of the arts

The glass corridor is ready. The sparkling Chihuly chandeliers are polished. Outside, the landscapers are adding the finishing touches.

All that’s missing now at the newly expanded Fine Arts Center is the public. They’re scheduled to descend in droves Thursday through Sunday for what’s being touted as the “Extremely Grand Opening” — the most significant arts event ever to hit Colorado Springs.

This star-studded series of lectures, tours and proclamations will — according to the center’s boosters — usher in a new era.

“On August 2nd, this is a different community,” said Michael De Marsche, the center’s president and chief executive officer. “No one will be able to say there’s no great culture in Colorado Springs.”

“The Fine Arts Center expansion means the arts are being taken more seriously in town,” said Christopher Lynn, curator of the Gallery of Contemporary Art at UCCS. “The momentum is going to carry the arts forward.”

Artistically, the star of the reopening is the Weisman Collection, which has been called the best collection of Pop and illusionistic art from the 1960s through the 1990s. Occupying the cavernous new El Pomar Gallery, it’s a taste of the sort of large-scale traveling exhibitions the center can now host.

The expansion also provides room to showcase much more of the center’s previously all-but-invisible permanent collection. It has been bolstered by patron Kathy Loo’s recent gift — her collection, with her husband, Dusty Loo, of more than 200 Colorado landscapes.

“With the Loo collection, our American collection goes back to the late 19th century,” De Marsche said. “It fills a void that was quite serious. If you’re looking for a summary of the 20th century, our collection now gives you a pretty good overview.”

Another major addition to the permanent collection: The museum’s third chandelier by glass artist Dale Chihuly. The nine-foot Orange Hornet was one of the hits of the artist’s 1996 Venice exhibition.

And a busy opening-week lecture schedule — featuring author and art connoisseur Thomas Hoving, camp film legend John Waters and actor-photographer Joel Grey — gives an idea of the sorts of cultural events in store for Colorado Springs.

But for all the reopening hoopla, the biggest star will be the building itself. The galleries have been closed since May 2006. Fourteen months and nearly $30 million later, the building boasts a 48,000-square-foot expansion that project architect David Owen Tryba calls his firm’s finest achievement.

It certainly wasn’t an easy one. The project began with two strikes against it: A tiny lot and an iconic building. (A 2001 expansion plan foundered in part because it would have dramatically altered John Gaw Meem’s 1936 original.)

“Our intent was to let the original building be the dominant structure,” said Bill Moon, who managed the project.

Meem’s masterpiece stands almost as he conceived it. Instead, Tryba chose to demolish the 1970 addition and head up, down, and out — to within three feet of the center’s neighbor at the American Numismatic Association, and within five feet of Colorado College’s Packard Hall.

Inside, exhibition space has been nearly tripled from the old center’s 10,000 square feet. There are now nine permanent collection galleries, two traveling exhibition galleries, and a larger-than-ever tactile gallery.

There are two new “wow” moments for visitors. The first is the south events gallery — the glass corridor’s official name.

“One problem with the the original building was that you never quite knew what was going on inside,” Moon said. “This invites people in. It’s sort of a living room for Colorado Springs.”

The other is the El Pomar Gallery, nearly 10,000 square feet and featuring a soaring 26-foot ceiling. If not for the exhibits, it could almost host two full-court basketball games.

“This is about as big as they get for traveling exhibit spaces,” said De Marsche.

When it comes to touring exhibits, the El Pomar Gallery makes the center the only regional competition to the Denver Art Museum. But De Marsche doesn’t like the word “competition.”

“Museums support one another,” he said. “If you go to one museum and have a great experience, you’ll go to another.”

Other improvements include an expanded museum shop (“Nobody gets out of here without going through the museum shop,” De Marsche said) and things the public will never see, such as expanded storage space and improved climate control and security that make it possible to host international traveling exhibitions.

“When you look at the space, the size and the beauty, it’s amazing we did it for what it cost,” said Kathy Loo, who helped spearhead the capital campaign.

The center has also increased its staff, snagging curators Tariana Navas-Nieves and Blake Milteer from Denver.

Charlie Snyder, the center’s public relations director, said what’s happening in Colorado Springs is part of a national trend.

“Forty cities are building, renovating or expanding their arts facilities,” he said. “It’s partly interest in the arts, and partly interest in the economic effect of the arts.”

In fact, the Fine Arts Center’s expansion isn’t even the largest in the state in the past year: The futuristic Frederic C. Hamilton building at the Denver Art Museum, which opened in October, is nearly three times larger.

De Marsche says the two buildings aren’t comparable.

“Denver wanted to create a signature building,” he said. “We were trying to create a work that coalesced with and augmented the historic building.”

De Marsche said that this expansion achieves that and more, and Loo agrees.

“It couldn’t have been better done as far as the blending of the old and the new,” she said.

One thing that’s almost unchanged is the parking situation. Will new patrons overflow the original lot?

“I hope for that problem,” De Marsche said. “I fervently wish for that problem.”

In the meantime, De Marsche is taking a few moments to let the reality of the new Fine Arts Center sink in.

“The Fine Arts Center is now one of the finest museums in America for what it is,” he said. “We don’t have the largest collection, but our collection is extremely good in what we do have. We have a great collection of Chihuly glass and great works by Georgia O’Keefe, Paul Cadmus and John Singer Sargent. We have a great Native American and Hispanic collection — and we’re exhibiting the Native American collection in a very sophisticated way.

“For a modestly scaled museum, it’s one of the best.”