Hip in Hicksville

The Arvada Center is unquestionably one of the most important art venues in the state. A midsized facility with a respectable budget, the institution incorporates several theaters, numerous meeting rooms, various workshops dedicated to diverse pursuits such as ceramics and ballet, and -- of greatest interest to those in the art world -- some large and handsome galleries. The Arvada Center is similar in function to the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, but the facilities are not nearly so grand as those in southern Colorado. (Though, really, what is?)

Arvada's art component is one of the largest in the metro area, encompassing the Lower Galleries -- six very spacious rooms, one of which soars to a ceiling that's nearly thirty feet high -- and the Upper Galleries, a somewhat smaller space informally sub-divided by small walls.

Currently both galleries are filled with the first exhibits to open under new gallery director and head curator Jerry Gilmore, who replaced Kathy Andrews late last year when she moved over to Metro's Center for the Visual Arts. And while some of the shows were in the planning stages during Andrews's tenure, it was Gilmore who brought them to fruition.

Gilmore has only been in Colorado since 1998, when he moved from Phoenix to take the job as director of the Fort Collins Museum of Contemporary Art, which was then known as the One West Art Center. It was Gilmore who changed the name to FCMoCA and redirected the programming to reflect the idea of a contemporary art museum. But in 2000, his time at FCMoCA was cut short by a serious car accident, which required eight months of recuperation.

In 2001, Susan Krane, who was then director of the CU Art Galleries in Boulder, asked Gilmore to take on the CU museum's exhibition-designer job. He jumped at the chance, putting him in the right place when Krane announced, just a few weeks later, that she was leaving to take over as director at the Scottsdale Center for the Arts. Gilmore was appointed interim director at CU, where he remained until he took on the position at the Arvada Center in 2002. "I know it sounds like a lot of moving around, but every one's been a step up," Gilmore says. "I like it here, and I'm planning to stay. I was very aggressive in applying for this position; I said to the search committee, 'It's my time to get this job.'" I guess they agreed with him.

For its entire history, the Arvada Center, despite being marooned in the conservative outer reaches of the suburbs, has showcased contemporary art, making it one of the state's art heavyweights. "Our attendance is as large as the art museums'," Gilmore says. "We have 100,000 school kids go through each year." (He's not kidding. I think there were at least that many there when I was visiting last week.) So it's no surprise that Gilmore plans to continue the Arvada Center's tradition -- with his own personal stamp on the programs, of course. "What I'm looking for is new artwork to Colorado," he explains. "New artwork by established Colorado artists and new artwork by emerging artists. I don't want people to see here what they've already seen at a gallery."

He's also putting his personal stamp on how those works are curated, reorganizing the staff into what could be called a curatorial team, where the director joins with assistants Rudi Cerri and Susan Bolton to collaborate on projects. "Rudi's off putting together the Frank Sampson show," Gilmore says, referring to this year's upcoming fall exhibit, "but I'll be involved in the hanging, and I'll be making suggestions about what should be included. If we do it together, we're all learning." (Yes, you're right: The fifty-year-old Gilmore is a former hippie.)

Gilmore is also reorganizing the exhibition spaces. He's made a start by fitting out the second-floor theater lobby with proper gallery lights, because the space has long hosted art shows but was never correctly lit, which made the work hard to see. In the Upper Galleries, Gilmore is creating two discrete galleries out of the many subdivided spaces. "There's a lot of visual noise," Gilmore says -- which is something of an understatement, considering the Upper Galleries' many oddball features, including numerous doors, an elevator, an open-walled overlook to the lower floor and a footprint with so many sides it's reminiscent of a jigsaw puzzle piece.

Downstairs, Gilmore is leaving the space as it is but reconceptualizing its functional qualities. He turned the first gallery into a foyer with text panels on the curved wall and left alternating galleries empty, so art fills only three of the six galleries. The idea of three and three is intellectually elegant, but, in actuality, it would have been better to leave only two galleries empty -- the two that flank the center atrium space -- and put another solo in the smaller center gallery that's adjacent to the atrium. But nothing's set in stone, and Gilmore's still in an experimental stage; the next show, the Sampson retrospective, will occupy all the galleries.