Boston of the West

Colorado Springs, at the foot of Pikes Peak, looked forward this week to a cultural renaissance. Due to arrive were such Eastern artistic notables as Painter Walt Kuhn, Manhattan Dealer Marie Sterner, Collectors A. Conger Goodyear, Thomas Cochran and Mr. & Mrs. Cornelius Bliss. In an auditorium in a brand new ivory-colored concrete and aluminum building these, and those residents who like to think of Colorado Springs as "the Boston of the West," were to hear Albert Spalding fiddle, watch Martha Graham dance, hear Soprano Eva Gauthier sing. There was also art to be seen: indigenous paintings of the Southwest and a loan collection of Cezanne, Renoir, Matisse, Picasso, Modigliani, Braque, Leger. All this manifestation of the life of the spirit was to open a brand new cultural fane in the Rockies: Colorado Springs' $1,000,000 Fine Arts Center.

Colorado Springs' No. 1 philanthropist and art-lover is Mrs. Fred Morgan Pike Taylor, a broker's widow, a St. Louis sack-&-bag man's daughter, who gave the Fine Arts Center $600,000 for a building, enough to endow it with $100,000 a year. Designed by Architect John Gaw Meem of Santa Fe, it is massive, severely functional.

Save for the collection of Southwestern and Indian art and 6,000 volumes of Americana given by Mrs. Taylor, the Fine Arts Center as yet has no permanent exhibits. With Artist Boardman Robinson supervising year-round classes in painting, sculpture, murals in true fresco, lithography, drawing, the Center will also seek to co-ordinate the musical and theatrical emanations of "the Boston of the West."

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