Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center

History

With $600,000, Alice Bemis Taylor funded the 1936 construction of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center and provided a $400,000 donation for an endowment. It was built on property owned by the Broadmoor Art Academy. Constructed during the Great Depression, 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 School 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 building which became a center for a museum, art school and performing arts venue for the growing city.

The fine arts center was designed by New Mexico architect John Gaw Meem who works often combined 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.

At the original Grand Opening in April 1936, Martha Graham performed Lamentation-Dance of Sorrow; "art icon Alexander Calder executed the stage design for an operetta; and Frank Lloyd Wright lectured on the new building." Art luminaries Boardman Robinson and Robert Motherwell were early teachers at the art school.

Description

The Fine Arts Center is a modern poured concrete Pueblo structure that integrates Southwestern, Art Deco 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 450-seat theater, a library, music room, museum shop and storage and office space. The murals on the exterior of the building were produced by Boardman Robinson and Frank Mechau.

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 reflectionof the building’s underlying function, which is to preserve culture and to honor the contemporary.

It borders Monument Valley Park and has a view of Pikes Peak. It is near the city’s business district, in a combined residential and office building zone, in the Colorado College campus. Its well-preserved state, reflects the initial building construction with maintenance and restoration.

Arts center

The multi-purpose center includes:

Admission is free to members.

Notable pieces and exhibits

Renovations

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 newly name SaGaJi Theatre. A new building was constructed that now provides modern 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 award-winning architect David Tryba and built to American Alliance of Museums standards.

Notable students