For the next year the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College will spotlight the “Gifts That Shape Us,” a special look at the top works of art, the donors and acquisitions that helped make the museum what it is today, leading into the future.

The museum’s Lane East Gallery at 30 W. Dale St. is filled with those works from the permanent collection. A top highlight is “Portrait of Miss Elsie Palmer (Lady in White).” The 17-year-old daughter of Colorado Springs founder Gen. William Jackson Palmer was painted by John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), renowned portraitist of the Belle Époque (“Beautiful Age”) of the elite in Paris and America.

There’s so much more and so many years to choose from for visitors to see and enjoy.

It began in 1919 when Julie Penrose, wife of Spencer Penrose of mining mega-wealth and The Broadmoor, opened their mansion as a Broadmoor Art Academy. Soon needing a larger space where they could have more artists and the public, philanthropist Julie teamed with Alice Bemis Taylor and Elizabeth Sage Hare with plans for a new community art center on the mansion’s site. Land donated by Spencer Penrose offered views of Pikes Peak to the west, looking down over Monument Valley Park.

The first art donation was Taylor’s collection of Southwestern, Hispanic and Native American art, the beginning of a research library and $400,000 to start up. A first collection of American modernist art came from Hare.

The Fine Arts Center all came together with the April 1936 grand opening for 5,000 guests in a spectacular John Gaw Meem-designed building in Pueblo Revival style, with Art Deco and Native American designs and patterns and plentiful glass. In 1986 it was first listed on the Register of Historic Places as Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center.

Tutt is an important Colorado Springs family name since the beginning of the city because Charles Tutt Sr. is credited as the person who helped convince Spencer Penrose to come to this area, and as partners they created mining empires. Through that they financed iconic parts of the area and events that have withstood time, and that includes major support for the Fine Arts Center. The support continues through Tutt family generations including Tutt’s great-grandson, R. Thayer Tutt Jr., vice chairman and chief investment officer for the philanthropic jewel El Pomar Foundation; he also is an officer of the Fine Arts Center Foundation.

Major museum contributions in the permanent collection have included the 50X50 Vogel Collection of contemporary art, 19th & 20th century Colorado landscape art in the Dusty and Katherine (Kathy) Loo Collection and the Jim Raughton Broadmoor Art Academy Collection.

In 2008 Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center was the recipient of 50 works from 50X50: The Herbert and Dorothy Vogel Collection from the New York collectors, with input from the National Gallery of Art, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. One museum in each of 50 states had received 50 artworks in this gifts program. The Vogels chose minimalist and conceptual art by little known or unknown artists. 

Kathy Loo and her late husband, Dusty Loo, gave major gift collections of art to the museum and the Dusty and Katherine Loo Collection continued after his death. There are 65 paintings by famed artists including Charles Partridge Adams, Albert Bierstadt, Charles Bunnell, Thomas Moran, Boardman Robinson,and Birger Sandzen, among others. Dusty Loo was quoted in 1993, “This collection is about Colorado — its history, its place as a fomenter of fine art.”

The Dr. Jim Raughton Broadmoor Art Academy Collection by husband and wife Raughton and Kathy Loo focuses on the lives and works by those early academy artists dating back to 1919 before the opening of the Fine Arts Center.

For 50 years the annual Colorado Springs Debutante Ball Purchase Fund had made gifts to the arts center, raising more than $620,00 for acquisition and restoration of art for the permanent collection. On the 50th anniversary the 2016 Debutantes chose James Surls’ “It’s Not About the Numbers” for the landing above the sunny glass gallery.

A special museum collection is treasured local Van Briggle pottery donated by preservationist and expert Lois Crouch, whose extensive collection is also at the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum along with its award-winning pottery from the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair.

“Come touch the art” is the happy invitation at the Mashburn/Marshall Tactile Gallery, created in 1981 by beloved Mary Mashburn and Peggy Marshall and their volunteer team. Here you’ll find a collection of more than 100 works, mainly sculpture, specifically designed for those with visual challenges or physically challenged. Support for this gift continues by Colorado Springs Alumnae Chapter of Delta Gamma Sorority.

Other gifts and donations across the museum often included the naming of galleries and amenities. For example, the performing arts SaGaJi Theatre name was in honor of the daughters of long-time supporter Tim Hoiles…Sarah, Gail and Jill. 

Wrapping up the look at permanent collection gifts to the arts center, these gifts were very different, the historic July 1, 2017, gift transfer of more than $175 million in assets from Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center to liberal arts Colorado College. It became the largest gift in the college’s history and a collaboration at a time when donations to the arts everywhere were at lowest levels. It became the Colorado Springs Arts Center at Colorado College, serving the college and as is its past, the community.