Denver Post: Running Lines with Joel Grey

Denver Post theater critic John Moore interviews theater legend (Cabaret, Chicago, Wicked) Joel Grey, who will be a special guest on Aug. 4 at the Fine Arts Center’s Extremely Grand Opening. Dr. Michael De Marsche will talk with Joel Grey on stage about everything from Cabaret and Wicked to his latest career as a photographer.

Tickets are still available for all of our special guest appearances! Buy tickets online or call 719.634.5583.

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Independent Cover Story: Extreme Makeover

Superlatives barely contain the excitement: It's an "Extremely Grand Opening" and the "Greatest Art Event in the History of Colorado Springs." The emphasis is ours, but it's hardly misplaced. The grandiosity of this event is inevitable. This is the Colorado Springs art community's moment in the spotlight. View the article and links to other related stories.

Gazette: The man behind the big art show

Michael De Marsche has introduced Colorado Springs to the big honking art exhibition: Chihuly, Warhol, Peter Max — shows with mass appeal. It’s appropriate that in choosing his first speaker for the Fine Arts Center’s reopening, the center’s president and CEO went for the guy who invented the blockbuster art show: Thomas Hoving. Read the complete article here.

Bruce Guenther praises FAC expansion: "Masterful and exciting"

Bruce Guenther, the nationally-renowned Chief Curator of the Portland Art Museum, recently lectured at the Fine Arts Center and had this to say about the new addition:

“The Fine Arts Center expansion is one of the most masterful and exciting remodeling projects I have seen in recent years. The new gallery spaces are beautifully proportioned and elegantly restrained in their detailing…a perfect setting for the collections.

"The sensitivity with which the Center and its important historic rooms have been restored and extended with the new addition speaks volumes to me about the value placed on heritage and the future for the arts in Colorado Springs.

"I congratulate the leadership of the Center and their architect, David Tryba, for bringing this venerable institution and its magnificent collections into the new century in such grand style.”

More Early Reviews
John Hazlehurst of the Colorado Springs Business Journal wrote on his blog: "Tryba's addition is … both a subtle, perfectly rendered, and utterly sympathetic addition to John Gaw Meem's great masterpiece and, amazingly, a transcendent piece of architecture in its own right."

"Conclusion: a triumph that few of us could have imagined before Mike DeMarsche arrived almost exactly four years ago. Better still, it should cure the local arts community of Denver envy. The new FAC is an infinitely better, more user-friendly, and more beautiful building than the renovated Denver Art Museum … " The full article can be found here.

The front page banner headline of the Woodmen/Cheyenne Edition (July 20) was "In a word, spectacular!" Written by Dave Vickers, it begins with "Colorado Springs should get ready to be amazed." The full article can be found here.

John Waters' Hairspray comes full circle

Hairspray was a successful movie for director John Waters in 1988; and then was adapted into a very successful Broadway musical in 2002. Now another incarnation, starring John Travolta in the role originated by Waters’ regular, Divine, and featuring Mr. Waters in a memorable cameo, will be released, as a musical movie, on July 20. And Waters' film, Cry-Baby, is being reworked into a musical for the stage, debuting at the La Jolla Playhouse in November. John Waters is one of many very special guests attending the FAC Extremely Grand Opening Aug. 2-5.

Alexander Calder in Focus at MCA Chicago

Alexander Calder, an influential artist credited for inventing the mobile, and who designed and built set pieces for stage productions at the original 1936 Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center grand opening, will be featured at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago in "Alexander Calder in Focus" from July 28, 2007 – April 2008. Calder is one of many fascinating and talented personalities who have shaped FAC history.