Celebrating 100 Years

$100,000+

El Pomar Foundation

$50,000-$99,999

Inasmuch Foundation

$25,000-$49,999

Bloom Foundation
Kriss Family

$10,000-$24,999

Esther Beynon
The Joseph Henry Edmondson Foundation
Lyda Hill Philanthropies
Cathy and Bart Holaday
Jill Tiefenthaler and Kevin Rask

$1,919-$9,999

Bain Family Foundation
David and Kathryn Birnbaum
Buck and Janelle Blessing
Gary L. and Anne Bradley
Buettner Family Foundation
Judy and Duncan Burdick
Susan Burghart and Rich Tosches
Cultural Office of the Pikes Peak Region
David Dahlin
Patty and Ray Deeny
Joan C. Donner
Marjo and Carl Donner
Michael and Jean Esch
Ben and Kate Faricy
Erin L. Hannan
Tim and Lorie Hoiles
Robert and Sara Ware Howsam
Jim and Becky Hurley
Susan and Ron Johnson
Betty Kane
Summer and Tobias Kircher
John and Carol Kleiner
Jay and Sandy Kloster
Kathy Loo and Jim Raughton

David Lord
Jon and Becky Medved
James and Virginia Moffett
C.J. Moore
Kate and Rich Murphy
Tom and Ann Naughton
Edward and Mary Osborne
Tom and Susan Pattee
Norma Lee Quinlan
Susie Ramsay
Kathleen Ricker
Janet Sawyer and Walter Gerber
Annette Seagraves
Wayne Smisek and The Lawrence Dryhurst Gallery
Alan and Barbara Steiner
Doug and Gwen Stimple
A. Marvin Strait
Eve Tilley and Sol Chavez
Bill and Frankie Tutt
Jane and Bruce Warren
Blake and Kathleen Wilson
Phil and Ann Winslow
Barbara Yalich

In the Museum

A series of exhibitions focused on the mission, vision, and history of the Broadmoor Art Academy and the Fine Arts Center.

O Beautiful! Shifting Landscapes of the Pikes Peak Region
Scenes from Life: Drawings by Bernard Arnest
Notes from the Musick Collection
The Broadmoor Art Academy and Its Legacy, 1919-1970

Exhibition Schedule

In the Theatre

From the earliest days, the Broadmoor Art Academy offered class instruction in the dramatic and music arts and served as the home of the Colorado Springs chapter of the national Drama League, later to be known as The Academy Players. In homage to The Academy Players of the BAA, the FAC Theatre Company performed special one-act play readings in the museum galleries on the select Museum Free Days.

In the Art School

Through 2019, the FAC’s Bemis School of Art offered classes in printmaking, lithography, en plein air painting, and other related mediums in celebration of the art and artists whose work here during the BAA’s heyday contributed significantly to artistic traditions of the era. Excursions to the Birger Sandzén Memorial Gallery in Kansas and the desert vistas of Taos, New Mexico immersed workshop participants in painting instruction reminiscent of the academicians of the Broadmoor Art Academy.

Browse classes

1919

Spencer and Julie Penrose donate their residence at 30 West Dale Street to the Broadmoor Art Academy (incorporated on Oct. 15).

1920

Under the direction of nationally known artists John F. Carlson (landscape) and Robert Reid (portraiture), BAA classes begin in the summer. Students, enrolled from around the country, can be found painting en plein air at Garden of the Gods.

1921

The BAA trains World War I veterans in the vocational skills to make a living with graphic design and commercial art as part of a governmental contract from 1921-23.

1926

The BAA formally contracts with Colorado College to serve as the Art Department of the college.

1931

Former instructor at the Art Students League in New York City, acclaimed illustrator, cartoonist, and muralist, Boardman Robinson, becomes instructor at (and later head of) the BAA, increasing the school’s national prominence.

Local philanthropist and art collector Alice Bemis Taylor expresses interest in building a small museum for her collection of Native American, Hispanic, and Spanish Colonial art of the Southwest.

Julie Penrose, Elizabeth Sage Hare, and Boardman Robinson convince the BAA Board and Alice Bemis Taylor of a bigger idea.

1934

The BAA Board of Trustees approves acclaimed architect John Gaw Meem’s design plans for a new, cutting-edge arts center that would weave elements of Pueblo structures and Native American iconography with modern Art Deco styles into a grand building that would later earn architectural awards and a spot on the National Register of Historic Places.

1935

The Broadmoor Art Academy officially changes its name to the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, in light of the grand vision for a formal, multi-disciplinary facility.

1936

The Fine Arts Center opens with a week of grand festivities, attended by 5,000 patrons, including some of the biggest names in art. The galleries feature Alice Bemis Taylor’s Southwestern Collection and an exhibition of paintings by modern and contemporary giants Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Fernand Leger, and Vincent Van Gogh. The Drama Club performed This Thing Called Love.

1937

Renowned African-American poet Langston Hughes presents a reading of his works at the FAC.

1938

Eminent architect Frank Lloyd Wright delivers the keynote address at the “Conference on the Fine Arts” at the FAC.

1941

Renowned modern artist Yasuo Kuniyoshi serves as a visiting artist at the FAC School.

1942

The FAC becomes a safe-keeping repository for art treasures from the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C., the San Diego Fine Arts Society, and the Harriet Levy collection in San Francisco for fear of air raids, including works by Picasso, Cézanne, Daumier, and Goya.

1946

Following World War II, the Colorado Springs Drama League changes its name to the Colorado Springs Civic Theatre and re-kindles renewed excitement and support for live theatre in the community through its successful productions in the FAC theatre.

1947

The exhibition, Pre-Columbian Art of Western Mexico, which includes material never-before seen outside of Mexico draws national attention.

Franco-American Jean Charlot, who was instrumental in the Mexican muralist movement, becomes the head of the FAC School, teaching fresco painting.

Former Grant Wood protégé and social-realist style muralist Edgar Britton begins a mural painting class at the FAC School.

1950

Following the War, regionalism and social realism declines in popularity. The FAC hires prominent abstract expressionists Emerson Woelffer and Robert Motherwell in response.

1954

The FAC charges an admission fee for the first time for the exhibition, Eighty Masterpieces of Gold. The fee was 25 cents. Fort Carson provides honor guards to protect the treasures while on view.

The FAC acquires Fog Horns by Arthur Dove, which would come to be known as one of the FAC’s most renowned and historically important paintings in the collection.

1968

The Bemis Art School for Children is built as a stand-alone facility at the north of the main FAC building.

1969

The FAC acquires John Singer Sargent’s Portrait of Miss Elsie Palmer, a portrait of General Palmer’s daughter by the preeminent portrait artist of his day.

1970

An east wing addition is opened to accommodate program and staff expansion.

1977

The FAC PlayFactory debuts and begins bringing theatre experiences to thousands of children in parks and schoolyards across the Pikes Peak region.

1978

The FAC acquires two of its most popular and sought-after works: Urbana No. 4 by Richard Diebenkorn and John Wayne by Marisol.

1981

The Tactile Gallery, established by a committee of dedicated volunteers, opens to enrich the museum experience of every visitor — with special attention to those who are sight-impaired.

1986

The FAC is placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Eric Bransby, a former student of Boardman Robinson, restores and reinvigorates the Robinson murals on the FAC façade.

1989

Hollywood icon Jimmy Stewart, plus many Broadmoor Art Academy artists and students, attend a black-tie gala to support the major exhibition: Pikes Peak Vision: The Broadmoor Art Academy, 1919-1945.

1999

The Youth Repertory Theatre program debuts, offering a five-week conservatory-style training program for both aspiring performers and designers/technicians.

2000

An exhibition seven years in the making, Mountain, Family, Spirit: The Arts and Culture of the Ute Indians opens to the public. A collection consisting of 140 historic and 40 contemporary works chosen by a curatorial committee and the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute tribes.

2004

The FAC commissions Dale Chihuly, the internationally acclaimed glass artist, to create a glass chandelier for the historic entrance lobby.

2006

The FAC MODERN opens at the Plaza of the Rockies, providing gallery space during construction of the Fine Arts Center expansion, hosting exhibitions by such notables as James McNeill Whistler and Annie Leibovitz.

2007

Architect David Owen Tryba’s renovation and expansion of the Fine Arts Center opens to the public.

2009

The FAC receives a gift of 50 works of art from New York collectors Dorothy and Herbert Vogel, as part of a national program entitled The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States. The FAC received works by Will Barnet, Adam Fuss, Michael Lucero, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, and Richard Tuttle.

FAC’s Bemis School of Art launches Creative Military Expressions, an artistic healing course for soldiers returning home with brain injuries and/or post traumatic stress disorder.

2013

The FAC produces and presents a lifetime retrospective of Manitou Springs artist Floyd D. Tunson, Son of Pop, which receives national critical acclaim from art ltd. and ArtForum magazine before journeying to other prestigious institutions as a traveling exhibition.

2017

The FAC enters into an historic alliance with Colorado College and becomes the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College.

2019

The FAC celebrates its 100th anniversary, from its beginnings as the Broadmoor Art Academy in 1919.