Yes, Doug, there is culture in Colorado Springs

IN the hope that we won't only be known for Michael Garman statues and velvet George Bush paintings, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center has had a major expansion and facelift:

Superlatives barely contain the excitement: It's an "Extremely Grand Opening" and the "Greatest Art Event in the History of Colorado Springs."

The emphasis is ours, but it's hardly misplaced. The grandiosity of this event is inevitable. If you've somehow missed this past year's buzz surrounding the renovation, expansion and gala reopening of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, give up now and don't bother changing out of your sweatpants — ever.

This is the Colorado Springs art community's moment in the spotlight. Our 70-year-old, one-of-a-kind Southwestern Art Deco landmark, in its expanded incarnation, is ready for business again.

Architect David Owen Tryba has long since rolled up the blueprints, contractor GE Johnson's crews have hauled off the crane, and this week the army of construction workers will file out of the new gallery spaces and glass corridor constructed to balance and complement John Gaw Meem's monolithic cement work of 1936.

Will this expand the internal horizons of our city's sentient beings? I sure hope so.

But outside of the more spacious, secure, elaborate and now climate-controlled halls that should be able to accommodate any show in the world, what does it mean for Colorado Springs at large?

"I wouldn't be a bit surprised that the whole composition of Colorado Springs begins to change dramatically within the next 10 to 15 years," De Marsche says.

With the caliber of shows on the way, including an Impressionist and Modern Masters from the New Orleans Museum of Art exhibit in December, De Marsche believes people will travel from all over the world to visit the FAC. During a recent museum construction tour, De Marsche joked that he no longer has to extol the FAC's capabilities over the phone to prospective exhibition curators.

An overseas collector he recently called told De Marsche that they had already peeked at the FAC's Web site and were satisfied with the museum's facilities. That never used to happen, he says.

"In essence," De Marsche says, "[the museum's stature] reshapes how we view our own city."

Tilley says a trickle-down theory explains how expansion may affect other artists and venues in town.

"We have some really good artists in this community, and we have some very decent art galleries," she says. "If we become an arts destination for serious art collectors, people will want to see what else is in the community. And that's bound to boost the sales and reputations of local artists."

De Marsche believes that people who have been exposed to high culture tend to become dissatisfied with the secondary medium of prints and reproductions, and that thereby supports the opening of more local galleries and art-based commerce.

The Grizzled Gizzard wrote something as well:

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.

And please, oh please, keep Doug Lamborn away from this place!!!!!