Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center

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The Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center opens to the public on August 4, 2007 after a $28.4 million transformation which allows the art museum's permanent collection to be on display like never before.

The two-story, 48,000 square-foot expansion, conceived by architect David Owen Tryba, was designed to complement the original 1936 John Gaw Meem building, which has housed the collections for the past seventy years and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The new museum features nine permanent collection galleries, two traveling exhibition galleries, and a tactile gallery; the renovated SaGaJi Theatre with its state-of-the-art lighting and sound systems and a dedicated rehearsal studio; two museum gift shops; seven new art studios and interactive spaces at the Bemis Art School; and a courtyard to display outdoor sculpture and hold special events.

A weekend of opening festivities takes place August 2-5, 2007 and will be attended by art icons including Thomas Hoving, the former Director of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art; artist and filmmaker John Waters; Broadway legend Joel Grey and will kick-off the inaugural exhibition for the new building -- The Eclectic Eye: Pop and Illusion - Selections from the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation.

Upcoming exhibitions:

The Eclectic Eye: Pop and Illusion - Selections from the Fredrick R. Weisman Art Foundation is a visually stimulating and intellectually challenging exhibition, presenting a large selection of pop art collected by Weisman and his wife Billie Milam Weisman. Artists featured include Cristo, Keith Haring, Nam June Paik, James Rosenquist and Andy Warhol. (August 2 - October 28, 2007)

Impressionist and Modern Masters, traveling from the New Orleans Museum of Art, features major impressionist artists such as Pablo Picasso, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, and Auguste Renoir. (December 8, 2007 - March 9, 2008)

Life as a Legend: Marilyn Monroe employs a dynamic range of artists and media, this exhibition celebrates and explores both the celebrity of, and the woman behind, one of the world's most recognizable icons. This vivid and diverse exhibition captures Marilyn's rise to stardom through works by more than sixty-five artists in styles ranging from fashion photography to pop art. (May 3 - July 5, 2008)

The Baroque World of Fernando Botero is a retrospective assembled over the past fifty years, drawn from the collection of the artist, including a hundred paintings, sculptures, and drawings selected by Dr. John Sillevis, curator of the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague. The exhibition will be presented in eight sections, highlighting the best works from various stages in Botero's development as an artist. (May 23 - August 15, 2009)

The permanent collection features one of the largest compilations of Native American and Southwestern Art in the country, as well as a $2 million dollar collection of Dale Chihuly glass, one of the largest in the world. The grand opening marks the first time that selections from all areas of the collection -- American, Native American, and Latin American art; much of which has been unseen for years -- will be exhibited simultaneously. The permanent collection also features a wide array of American art by John Singer Sargent, Arthur Dove, Georgia O'Keeffe, Walt Kuhn, John James Audubon, Robert Motherwell, and Paul Cadmus.

Dale Chihuly's breathtaking work of Chandeliers, Persians and Macchias enliven spaces all over the world. The development of his creative process and complex technique began with works such as his famous Navajo Cylinders and Basket series. This presentation highlights those seminal works inspired by Native American art, specifically Native American textiles and basketry.

Website: http://www.csfineartscenter.org/