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Best Colorado History Show

Colorado Landscapes and the New Age of Discovery

Maybe it was the change in the millennium that put everyone in a retrospective mood, but for whatever reason, history has gotten a lot more popular lately. Cable TV and popular magazines are jammed with it. Colorado's art world has not been left out, with a number of historical exhibits having been presented over the past few years. Colorado Landscapes and the New Age of Discovery was an intelligent and ambitious show of this type. It was organized by guest curator Doug Erion, who also wrote the informative, if idiosyncratic, catalogue. A neophyte when it comes to curatorial practice, Erion is a noted landscape painter and a serious art collector, so he did have a handle on the material. The exhibit consisted entirely of landscape photos and paintings, but they were a varied bunch, running from traditional views to early-modernist ones. The artists ranged from those who just passed through the state to those who call Colorado home. It was a great scene.

Best Political Show

Revolutions: Generations of Russian Jewish Avant-Garde Artists

Simon Zalkind, director of the Singer Gallery of the Mizel Center for Arts and Culture, has long been known for his high-quality exhibitions. The most recent case in point is Revolutions: Generations of Russian Jewish Avant-Garde Artists, which is still on display. It's a knockout that examines modern and contemporary art by Russian Jewish artists. To produce it, Zalkind teamed up with Mina Litinsky, director of the Sloane Gallery, a nationally known venue for contemporary Russian art and the oldest gallery in LoDo. Together they came up with a show rich in visuals and ideas that included a who's who of vanguard artists from the early Soviet era, plus a number of postmodern political artists from post-Soviet times. Some of the big names include El Lissitzky, Sonia Delaunay and Marc Chagall, as well as Komar and Melamid, who were given their own gallery at the Mizel, in which a rejected public-art commission for Denver's new Alfred A. Arraj Federal Courthouse is laid out. Politics and art don't always go together well, but in this pithy show, they made excellent bedfellows.

Best New Public Art

"Common Ground" Barbara Grygutis

The Gates Family Foundation, in celebration of the millennium, commissioned Barbara Grygutis of Tucson to create "Common Ground," a mammoth sculpture, for the recently completed Commons Park. Northeast of the intersection of Little Raven and 15th streets, the park is close to where Denver's first settlers established their camp. The sculpture, completed last fall, is a serpentine stone wall that snakes through the park. Made of Castle Rock rhyolite laid by craftsmen from Brighton's Rock & Company, the piece is meant to suggest a bend in the river, while the path that runs alongside it evokes the trails of the Indians and the pioneers. In some places, the sculpture's contours reflect the mountains to the west; in others, the linear profile of the city. Since the park is only a few years old, it has little in the way of trees, flowers or grass. Unquestionably, the coolest thing about it is "Common Ground."

Best Art News for the City

The Harmsen Collection

For most of its history, the Denver Art Museum paid little attention to the art of the American West, so vital to our region. But if the museum turned up its nose at Western painting and sculpture, private collectors did not. Among the top rank of these collectors are Bill and Dorothy Harmsen, the couple that started the Jolly Rancher candy company and were thus able to find the money needed to gather thousands of works. The loot ranges from paintings and sculptures to an entire stagecoach. For years, the Harmsens shopped their collection around to institutions in order to find a permanent home for it, and there were even plans a couple of years ago to build a Harmsen Museum in Lakewood, but that never happened. Then, in a surprise move last summer, the DAM announced that the Harmsens were giving their collection to the museum. The huge gift led to a change in programming at the DAM, which will now give additional weight to regional art -- and not just old cowboy and Indian paintings, but modern and contemporary art as well. To the DAM, we say: "Welcome home."

Best Art News for the Suburbs

Museum of Outdoor Arts

Last year, the powers that be in Englewood took stock of their town, and they didn't like what they saw. Possibly for the first time, the complete lack of cultural amenities seemed to matter -- so city leaders began casting about for something they could do to change the situation. At the same time, the Museum of Outdoor Arts, facing a substantial rent increase at its Greenwood Village facility, was looking for a new home. It was a match made in heaven. Englewood gave the museum free rent for twenty years in spacious offices on the second floor of its civic building -- a rehabbed department store that also houses the library and the municipal courts -- along with use of the many public spaces in and around Englewood's CityCenter, the development that is replacing the old Cinderella City shopping center. The new project has a long way to go, but the MOA's collection will surely help.

Best News for Latin American Art

Museo de las Américas

Denver's Museo de las Américas is one of the only institutions anywhere that focuses on the art of the Southwestern United States, along with that of Mexico, Central and South America and the Caribbean, and it programs it all from within the modest facilities on Santa Fe Drive. But Museo director Jose Aguayo has always been a big dreamer. Ten years ago, he brought the Museo from dream to reality, and now he'd like to do the same with a dramatic and architecturally significant planned addition and alteration of the currently non-distinct building. The design -- cooked up by RoTo Architects of Los Angeles, a nationally renowned firm headed up by famous architect Michael Rotondi -- completely reconfigures the space, adding studios and a row of artists' lofts. The most exciting feature will be an elaborate facade reminiscent of the fabulous Mayan Theatre's -- a logical choice, since both are meant to recall the architecture of the ancient Mayans.

Best Rediscovery of a Nearly Forgotten Colorado Artist

Edgar Britton

It's common wisdom that once an artist dies, his or her work should soar in value, but more often, the artist fades from the collective memory. That's what happened to Edgar Britton, who in the 1950s, '60s and '70s was Colorado's most famous sculptor. But last year, nearly twenty years after his death, in 1982, Britton was back in the center ring. Not only was he the subject of a pair of simultaneous shows at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center and the Coburn Gallery on the Colorado College campus, but his life and work were the subject of a cogent if unusual monograph written by CC professor Jane Hilberry. The unconventional nature of the Hilberry book is fully revealed by its somewhat outlandish title, The Erotic Art of Edgar Britton. It was good to see one of the best artists in the state finally being given his due.

Best Denver Art-World Mystery

The missing work of Max Lazarus

In 1939, German-Jewish artist Max Lazarus came to the United States from Trier, Germany, where he was that city's most important expressionist painter. Prominent in the Jewish community, Lazarus was commissioned to paint a mural on the ceiling of Trier's main synagogue. But the 1930s was not the best time to be a Jewish modernist in Germany, and Lazarus emigrated to the States. He eventually settled in Denver, where, in the 1940s, he got a job teaching arts and crafts and carried on his work as an artist until shortly before his death in 1964. Now the museum in Trier would like to collect his work, and since very few German pieces survived -- the Nazis burned down Trier's synagogue, and most of his other work was destroyed -- the institution has come looking in Denver. But nearly forty years after his death, Lazarus has been absolutely forgotten in the Mile High City, and except for a handful of pieces, his work is unknown. So the museum has launched a concerted effort, even hiring a detective to track down the estate. It's a good mystery, and, hopefully, one that will be solved.

Best Example of Art-World Perseverance

Phil Bender

In 1980, a group of friends opened an alternative art space in a then-rough part of town and gave it the difficult and unconventional name of Pirate: a contemporary art oasis. But the co-op's name perfectly reflected the difficult and unconventional work that has so often found a home in the space at 3659 Navajo Street. Now, more than twenty years later, the original members have mostly scattered to the four winds. The exception is Phil Bender, who has not only remained as an active Pirate member, but has also run the place and kept it going during many dry spells. In addition, Bender has presented a solo exhibit of his own work at least once a year since Pirate's founding. For last summer's Bender bender, Paris, Paris Architecture, Etc., Etc., he covered the walls with hubcaps, postcards, coasters and other found items -- playing off his longtime penchant for using objects collected in multiples and putting them together in unlikely combinations to create pieces that are greater than the sum of their parts. Truly, Bender's unwavering dedication through the years has set a fine example for other artists.

Best Arts Commune

The Other Side

You have to hand it to the folks who strive to try something different, and the Other Side is just such an effort. Rather than being just another artist cooperative, it's more of a true collective, where artists not only share studio and gallery space (and daycare), but attempt to give back to the community by offering classes and workshops, as well as art for sale at reasonable prices. Located in the former Platte Anchor Bolt warehouse space and created out of the visionary dreamworks of grassroots art entrepreneurs Chris Minter and Jeff Ball, the Other Side is a place where artful things and concepts can grow unfettered. Check it out.

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