Art Appreciation in Colorado Springs Fine Art Center
Art Appreciation in Colorado Springs Fine Art Center
Note: This is a student project submitted in partial fulfillment for HUMN2005.
As a child, I took an art class at the Bemis art school located across from the Fine Art Center. This gave me the opportunity to visit the Fine Art Center often. I enjoyed the nativities from around the world, but besides that I would walk through the entire museum and be bored in 5 minutes. Though the amount of time I spend visiting the museum and my appreciation of the art may have changed, my opinion of the gallery has not. It has a small number of items worth viewing, in my opinion it has several pieces that seem out of place in the museum, and the museum could use improvement.
There were some items in the museum that were interesting and relevant. I can think of one piece that fit in the museum and had a story. It was a life size portrait of Palmer's daughter by John Singer Sargent. I think this fits well and belongs in Colorado Springs. There were also some pieces of glass art that were interesting. There were some items like this that I believe fit well, had content, and were interesting.
Some of the items either were uninteresting or did not fit well. One gallery was of blurry photographs of historical reenactments. Some of these both failed to remove modern cars and people in the background and looked like they could have been taken with a polaroid camera. From what I learned in Art and Music Appreciation I was able to see the significance of some Latin American religious art, but I was perplexed as to why a chair and photograph of the inside of a car were included in a gallery of mexican Catholic art. Several items like these seemed to be out of place and uninteresting.
The museum itself could be updated to take full advantage of multimedia capabilities and captivate younger audiences with hands on features. I remember the boredom I would have as a child in this museum. I believe that if there were more hands on exhibits like the tactile art gallery, interactive museum exhibits, and scavenger hunts like at the Denver Art Museum, the museum might be more interesting to kids. I also think that the museum needs to use more technology to enhance the guest experience and add a new dimension of interactivity with the art. These are some areas where I think the museum could improve.
There are some interesting and insightful pieces, but many are uninteresting and out of place. There are several things that the museum could do to improve the guest experience. If you are interested in seeing this gallery I suggest that you visit it on one of their free days which are the third Saturday in the month.
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Saturday, December 6, 2008