Fort Collins has a wealth of finely curated art museums accessible to students and members of the community. Regardless of your age, specialization, or career, art museums tend to be capsules in space and time where minutes don’t flow the same way. For students in particular, a brain vacation is sometimes ideal for a stressed mind.
Luckily for students, there is an easily accessible art museum conveniently located across from campus. The Gregory Allicar Museum of Art is located at 1400 Remington St. in the University Arts Center. The museum has 3,500 works of art in its collection and rotates regularly through exciting exhibits.
“(Art) can do a lot of different things,” said Lynn Boland, director and chief curator of GAMA, of what is most important for students to remove from the art held in the museum. “There is the fun side and the appreciation of art, but for me, at least, contemporary art looks at current issues that are vital. I think art gives access to ideas and ways of thinking – it’s not as linear as other (art) forms.
For example, an ongoing exhibition titled “Reclamation: Recovering Our Relationship with Place” is part of the global art project “Extraction: Art on the Edge of the Abyss”. This project focuses on extracting the earth’s natural resources, focusing on how they are necessary for modern life and growth and also detrimental to the overall health of the planet and its inhabitants.
An upcoming exhibition by artist Dionne Lee examines how our human forms move through landscapes both physically and emotionally, and how the landscapes of different people contain different types of trauma – an exercise in empathy and understanding.
In addition to hosting exhibitions open to the public five days a week, GAMA offers on its website a range of virtual exhibitions available 24 hours a day during their exhibition periods.
The museum is open Wednesday, Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., from 10 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Thursday and from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday. GAMA is closed to the public on Mondays and Tuesdays as well as public holidays and university vacations. Entrance is always free and open to everyone.
Off-campus, a well-known and nearby art museum is the Museum of Art Fort Collins. The Art Museum is located at 201 S. College Avenue. in what was once the post office building. While going through many name changes and a move since it opened in 1983, this museum maintains a nationally recognized visual art standard within its walls.
Lisa Hatchadoorian, executive director of the museum since 2014, said the most meaningful part of museum activity for her is “to open up a world of art to the general public – from toddlers to the elderly”.
The art she talks about follows a wide range of mediums. Their upcoming exhibitions this fall really have something for everyone.
Hatchadoorian spoke about the upcoming exhibition “Blow Up II: Inflatable Contemporary Art”, an exhibition featuring inflatable works of art created by 11 different artists from across the country, calling it interesting “because it’s not a material you typically think of for a contemporary high-level art. “
“Blow Up II” runs from October 29 to January 9, 2022.
The other fall exhibition is entitled “Beauty and the Beast: An Unexpected Journey”, from August 27 to October 17. This is a semi-collaborative sculpture exhibition by Lorri Acott and Adam Schultz from Red Feather Lakes, Colorado. Acott and Schultz describe their exhibit as following the hero’s journey, illustrating transformation and change – something that resonates deeply with students in particular.
Acott says that while his art and that of Schultz represent the hero’s journey in his own life, the couple also want viewers “to come with their own ideas, their own thoughts, their own experiences, their own reactions to our art, and I hope they will see things, find things that we haven’t even considered.
The Museum of Art Fort Collins accepted nominations until August 15 for their 18th Annual Northern Colorado Eye Center Masks Benefit. The artists have donated 2,750 masks over the years, and the proceeds have raised more than $ 1.7 million to support the museum’s mission: “to unleash the power of the visual arts.”
The museum is open to the public from Wednesday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Admission is $ 4 for students and $ 5 for adults.
Hailee Stegall can be reached at entertainment@collegian.com or on Twitter @haileenstegall.
