Even though public spaces have opened with seeming regularity in the past year or so, the Denver metropolitan area hardly holds a monopoly on art-museum construction in the state.
The Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center has gotten in on the act, with nearly 20,000 people visiting the institution since it inaugurated a $30 million addition and renovation in August.
The 48,000-square-foot expansion offers many enhancements from vastly improved art storage to 28,600 square feet of exhibition space — nearly twice as much as before. But more important, museum leaders say, are the myriad possibilities it presents.
“The Fine Arts Center, after having gone through a huge transformation, is safe and secure and ready to launch a new era,” said Shawn Raintree, interim chief executive.
“It’s simply exhilarating to be able to be at that moment of opportunity where we can go in so many exciting new directions.”
Rather than an attention-grabbing, signature structure, David Owen Tryba Architects of Denver, to its credit, created a largely self-effacing design that defers to the museum’s original 1936 building, one of the state’s architectural gems.
Arguably the masterpiece of respected Santa Fe architect John Gaw Meem (1894-1983), it inventively combines Southwestern Indian pueblo architecture with elements of art deco and the international style of the 1920s and ’30s.
Early discussions of an addition ignited a debate, because of drawbacks to the possible sites around the museum. Tryba sidestepped the controversy by replacing an existing 1970 addition on the east side of the Meem building.
The new expansion maintains the basic footprint and visitor flow of the 37-year-old structure as well as a popular interior courtyard it created, but cleverly adds square footage and larger, more accommodating galleries.
It gracefully extends the main facade, with a glass-curtain wall providing a soft, transparent contrast to the concrete walls of the old building and adding sightlines to what had been an isolated sculpture garden to the east.
“The transformation is remarkable,” said Jon Stepleton, the new chairman of the board of trustees. “It’s utter and complete in terms of our capacity to present spectacular art in this community. It’s not the same place anymore.”
The opening has not come without some bumps in the road. The museum ended its 2007 fiscal year on Aug. 31 with a deficit of $891,555, the result in part of grand-opening expenses and extended closure during construction.
Stepleton said the shortfall was partially offset by a surplus from the year before, and he is confident the remainder will be made up soon.
“We expected to have something like that,” he said. “We didn’t know what the number was going to be, and perhaps it is a little higher than we had wished it would have been, but we were prepared for that.”
Katherine Loo, one of the museum’s major benefactors, is leading a three-year effort to provide new sources of operating income, such as boosts in sponsorships and underwriting. The museum is on track to end this fiscal year with a balanced budget of $6.2 million.
At the same time, Stepleton said, the museum will meet its fundraising goal of $30 million for the renovation and expansion by the end of the 2008 fiscal year. It has also nearly secured an additional $13 million in bequests and donations of art.
“For all intents and purposes, the capital campaign is over, and it’s been highly successful,” he said.
Now the museum is looking to the future, with its two curators bursting with ideas for potential shows, both those organized in Colorado Springs and from elsewhere.
“We truly believe,” said Blake Milteer, curator of 19th-21st century American art, “that we have the dual responsibility not only to our own community and our own artists but also to bring the world to Colorado Springs.”
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com.
