![CSFA](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/CSFA.jpg)
The Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College (FAC) is an arts center located just north of downtown
Colorado Springs, Colorado
Colorado Springs is a home rule municipality in, and the county seat of, El Paso County, Colorado, United States. It is the largest city in El Paso County, with a population of 478,961 at the 2020 United States Census, a 15.02% increase since ...
. Located on the same city block are the
American Numismatic Association
The American Numismatic Association (ANA) is an organization founded in 1891 by George Francis Heath. Located in Colorado Springs, Colorado, it was formed to advance the knowledge of numismatics (the study of coins) along educational, histori ...
and part of the campus of
Colorado College
Colorado College is a private liberal arts college in Colorado Springs, Colorado. It was founded in 1874 by Thomas Nelson Haskell in his daughter's memory. The college enrolls approximately 2,000 undergraduates at its campus. The college offer ...
.
The center uses a thick red outline of a square as its logo.
History
With $600,000,
Alice Bemis Taylor Alice Bemis Taylor (October 15, 1877 – June 22, 1942) was a philanthropist and was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 2010.
For her significant contributions to Colorado College, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center and the Colora ...
funded the 1936 construction of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center and provided a $400,000 donation for an endowment. Constructed during the
Great Depression
The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
, Taylor saw the project as a means of employment for unemployed laborers. Taylor donated her extensive Indian and Hispanic art and her collection of 6,000 volumes of Americana. She envisioned a place that would be accessible to all people, with no admission charge.
The Broadmoor Art Academy previously stood on the grounds of the current art center, on land donated by Julie Penrose.
Elizabeth Sage Hare also collaborated with Taylor and Penrose on the center, the nation's first combined art museum, art school and performing arts venue.
The Fine Arts Center was designed by
New Mexico
)
, population_demonym = New Mexican ( es, Neomexicano, Neomejicano, Nuevo Mexicano)
, seat = Santa Fe
, LargestCity = Albuquerque
, LargestMetro = Tiguex
, OfficialLang = None
, Languages = English, Spanish ( New Mexican), Navajo, Ker ...
architect
John Gaw Meem
John Gaw Meem IV (November 17, 1894 – August 4, 1983) was an American architect based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He is best known for his instrumental role in the development and popularization of the Pueblo Revival Style and as a proponent of ar ...
in a revolutionary design combining modernism and indigenous Pueblo style architecture
Pueblo Revival Style and
Spanish Colonial into "
Santa Fe Style" architecture. In 1940, Meem's most modern design earned a Silver Medal at the Fifth Quadrennial Pan American Congress of Architecture. The building is listed on the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
.
At the original Grand Opening in April 1936,
Martha Graham
Martha Graham (May 11, 1894 – April 1, 1991) was an American modern dancer and choreographer. Her style, the Graham technique, reshaped American dance and is still taught worldwide.
Graham danced and taught for over seventy years. She wa ...
performed ''
Lamentation-Dance of Sorrow'';
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key role in the architectural movements o ...
lectured about the building, Manuel de Falla performed an opera with life-size marionettes, and
Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder (; July 22, 1898 – November 11, 1976) was an American sculptor known both for his innovative mobiles (kinetic sculptures powered by motors or air currents) that embrace chance in their aesthetic, his static "stabiles", and his ...
created the stage design for a sung dialog, Eric Satie's "Socrate." Among the art school's instructors were
Boardman Robinson
Boardman Michael Robinson (1876–1952) was a Canadian-American painter, illustrator and cartoonist.
Biography
Early years
Boardman Robinson was born September 6, 1876 in Nova Scotia. He spent his childhood in England and Canada, before mov ...
, Adolf Dehn, and Jean Charlot.
On July 1, 2017, the center become the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College.
Description
The Fine Arts Center is a modern poured concrete Pueblo-inspired structure that integrates Southwestern,
Art Deco
Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...
and Classic architectural elements. It has one, two and, for the theatre fly tower, four stories. Within the building are galleries, art studios, performing art facilities including a 400-seat theater, a music room, retail shop and storage and office space. The murals on the exterior of the building were produced by
Boardman Robinson
Boardman Michael Robinson (1876–1952) was a Canadian-American painter, illustrator and cartoonist.
Biography
Early years
Boardman Robinson was born September 6, 1876 in Nova Scotia. He spent his childhood in England and Canada, before mov ...
and
Frank Mechau
Frank Albert Mechau (may-show) Jr. (January 1904–1946), was an American artist and muralist.
Mechau's aspiration to become an artist began early in his life and developed rapidly. His determination led to a distinguished career that inc ...
.
The auditorium includes three aluminum relief panels over the doors depicting Pueblo and Hopi Indian Kachina masks, all by noted Denver sculptor,
Arnold Rönnebeck, murals in the original theater lounge (now restaurant) by Andrew Dasburg, Kenneth Adams, and Ward Lockwood, and a downstairs lounge mural by Archie Musick.
For the National Register of Historic Places, it was described as follows:
Its monolithic pueblo massing, its undisguised modern use of concrete, aluminum and glass; its southwestern details, its Native American designs abstracted into Art Deco ornamentation; its streamlined elegance; and its classical proportions - all result in a timeless character - with fundamental roots to the region and the time as well as manifesting an innovative architectural reflection of the building's underlying function, which is to preserve culture and to honor the contemporary.
It borders
Monument Valley Park
Monument Valley Park is a historic, recreational park in Colorado Springs, Colorado through which Monument Creek flows. It is a National Register of Historic Places listing and is on the Colorado State Register of Historic Properties.
Geograph ...
and has a view of
Pikes Peak
Pikes Peak is the List of mountain ranges of Colorado#Mountain ranges, highest summit of the southern Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, in North America. The Ultra-prominent peak, ultra-prominent fourteener is located in Pike National Forest ...
. It is near the city's business district, in a combined residential and office building zone, in the
Colorado College
Colorado College is a private liberal arts college in Colorado Springs, Colorado. It was founded in 1874 by Thomas Nelson Haskell in his daughter's memory. The college enrolls approximately 2,000 undergraduates at its campus. The college offer ...
campus. Its well-preserved state, reflects the initial building construction with maintenance and restoration.
Arts center
The multi-purpose center includes:
* Art Museum - Several galleries, where the permanent collection of Southwest art is displayed, in addition to other permanent works as well as an annual calendar of curated and traveling shows.
* The Fine Arts Center Theatre Company produces comedies, dramas and musicals. It also hosts music and dance events and film festivals.
* Bemis School of Art offers art education to the local community, with classes for adults and children. Four times a year it holds free "Family Adventure Days".
* A retail shop and lounge
Admission is free to members, students and teachers.
Notable pieces and exhibits
![CSFAC 3](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/CSFAC_3.jpg)
*
Dale Chihuly
Dale Chihuly () (born September 20, 1941) is an American glass artist and entrepreneur. He is best known in the field of blown glass, "moving it into the realm of large-scale sculpture".
Early life
Dale Patrick Chihuly was born on September 20 ...
chandeliers.
* One of the country's "strongest collections" of Native American, Latin American and Hispanic American art.
* Notable artists within the FAC permanent collection include:
John Singer Sargent
John Singer Sargent (; January 12, 1856 – April 14, 1925) was an American expatriate artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian-era luxury. He created roughly 900 oil paintings and more ...
,
Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia Totto O'Keeffe (November 15, 1887 – March 6, 1986) was an American modernist artist. She was known for her paintings of enlarged flowers, New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico landscapes. O'Keeffe has been called the "Mother of Amer ...
,
Richard Diebenkorn
Richard Diebenkorn (April 22, 1922 – March 30, 1993) was an American painter and printmaker. His early work is associated with abstract expressionism and the Bay Area Figurative Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In the late 1960s he bega ...
,
Walt Kuhn
Walter Francis Kuhn (October 27, 1877 – July 13, 1949) was an American painter and an organizer of the famous Armory Show of 1913, which was America's first large-scale introduction to European Modernism.
Biography
Kuhn was born in New York ...
,
and
Ansel Adams
Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association of photographers advoca ...
.
Theater
The center was constructed with a performing arts theater.
In 2006, the center was expanded by more than 48,000 square feet. A new wing was constructed adjacent to the Center's Bemis School of Art to add studio space for classrooms and rehearsal spaces for the theatre. A new building was constructed that provides additional exhibition space for the Center's museum. There are large expanses of gallery spaces reserved exclusively for American Indian, Latin American and American art. It was designed by architect David Tryba and built to
American Alliance of Museums
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
standards.
Notable students
*
Robert Beauchamp
Robert Beauchamp (1923 – 22 March 1995) was an American figurative painter and arts educator. Beauchamp's paintings and drawings are known for depicting dramatic creatures and figures with expressionistic colors. His work was described in the ...
*
Eric Bransby
*
James Duard Marshall
James Duard Marshall (September 29, 1914 – January 26, 2010) was a painter, lithographer, museum director, and art conservator who lived most of his life in Kansas City. Duard ronounced "doo-erd"was a student of Thomas Hart Benton and is b ...
*
Veronica Helfensteller
See also
*
References
External links
The Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center
{{authority control
Institutions accredited by the American Alliance of Museums
Buildings and structures on the National Register of Historic Places in Colorado
Art museums and galleries in Colorado
Museums in Colorado Springs, Colorado
Art museums established in 1936
1936 establishments in Colorado
National Register of Historic Places in Colorado Springs, Colorado