In 2007, the almost-finished "Mustang" finally went from the Jimenez studio to California, for pre-installation engineering. By now its value had doubled and then tripled, after the city's then-public art program administrator, Kendall Peterson, had the sculpture appraised by Jeffrey B. Bergen of ACA Galleries in New York City, which represented Jiménez. Bergen estimated its value at $2 million. "This figure accounts for the fact that there are only a handful of monumental works left by Luis Jiménez, and this is the largest of the group," he wrote. "All of the monumental works by Luis A. Jiménez would be appraised somewhere in this price range."
Transporting this monumental $2 million beast over the Rocky Mountains to DIA was challenging, because it qualified as a wide load. "It took a very circuitous route," says Chasansky, who'd just joined the airport staff. But that meant he was there to oversee the installation in February 2008, and despite the rocky road "Mustang" took to DIA, "it went without a hitch," he recalls. So did the sculpture's dedication four months later, when city officials and the press got to get up close and personal with the very anatomically correct horse. "We got some comments, pro and con," he says, but at an airport where gargoyles already watched over the baggage department and the New World Order ruled the terminal, the horse sculpture didn't attract that many neigh-sayers.
Noah Van Sciver
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And then, in early 2009, local developer Rachel Hultin created a now-defunct Facebook page called "DIA's Heinous Blue Mustang Has Got to Go" that quickly attracted thousands of members — as well as a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal and another major piece in the New York Times.
To push her cause, she asked people to write haikus about the horse, which resulted in works like this:
Spooky blue flame steed
Greets us with heinous anus
This is art? Horseshit!
But no matter how artistically people made their requests, "Mustang" couldn't go anywhere, city officials told Hultin — as well as all those national reporters. At least not for another four years. It was Denver policy that public art pieces had to be in place for five years before the city would even think of moving them, much less dumping them altogether.
That policy is reaffirmed in the DIA Art & Culture Program Public Art Policy guide dated October 1, 2012:
The Denver Commission on Cultural Affairs and the Denver Public Art Program are committed to the ongoing presence and integrity of public art and the sites for which public art is created, to preserving the vision of the artists who create public art, and to assuring continued access to the artworks in the city's collection by the public.
On rare occasions, unusual circumstances warrant the removal, relocation or disposal of a work of art from the city's collection. The Denver Commission on Cultural Affairs follows established procedures for deaccession or relocation to insure that the integrity of public art, artists and the public is respected. Generally, artwork will not be removed from public display sooner than five years after its installation. A request for deaccession or relocation involves careful consideration of public opinion, professional judgment and legal advice.
That five-year anniversary hits on February 11, 2013. Is it finally time to put "Mustang" out to pasture?
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Denver International Airport is now in the process of commissioning a second round of artwork, a $4.5 million cultural windfall tied to the South Terminal expansion. The first phase ended with "Mustang," Chasansky says, and there's been lots of discussion of what to do this round. "We need to stay nimble and be good stewards of public art," he says. "We need to think how things will benefit the public."
One project has already been introduced: "Friends as Neighbors," which brought four artists to the airport for a week, then sent them back to their homes to create proposals that took Colorado's geography and culture into account. "Parterre," a new piece by Longmont's Kim Dickey, was installed in the terminal this past December 21. That was a big day on the Mayan calendar, conspiracy theorists should note, but the intricate ceramic piece was more inspired by eighteenth-century European gardens and the airport's own design (which does not mimic male genitalia, no matter what a recent Colbert Report would have you believe). And sometime in February, a performance piece will feature people carrying sound equipment in their luggage, stopping to entertain (or at least startle) passersby.
Do not expect many more blue sculptures, even though Lawrence Argent's "I See What You Mean," aka the Big Blue Bear, outside the Colorado Convention Center, has won many fans. "We won't be the city of blue animals," Chasansky promises.
But this is likely to remain the home of the Big Blue Horse.
Because Chasansky isn't hearing many calls to deaccession the piece these days. "There continues to be discussion," he says, noting that about 50 percent love the piece, 50 percent loathe it. That statistic was confirmed in an airport art survey conducted last year. But the survey also determined that "Mustang" is the best-known piece of art at DIA: It has become a cultural touchpoint, and not just in Colorado. In 2011, Yahoo named it one of the top five bizarre pieces of public art in the country — but "Mustang" only ranked third.
