GREENWOOD VILLAGE, Colo. — The Museum of Outdoor Arts, known for its free outdoor sculptures in places like Marjorie Park, is opening a new, indoor exhibition titled “Beyond the Western Horizon” on March 19.
The show, on view in the museum’s Madden Gallery through July 31, brings together about 20 contemporary Western artists. Organizer Cynthia Madden Leitner, the museum’s founder and director, said the work isn’t limited to one vision of the West.
“It isn’t set on one genre of the West or one specific theme,” Madden Leitner said. “It’s also about change, and the West being a frontier… You’ll see trains and cars and automobiles, but it’s also about that quintessential tradition of the horse and the rider and going across the prairie.”
Founded in 1981 to integrate art into development at Greenwood Plaza, the nonprofit museum started outdoors and added indoor gallery space in 1995. Leitner said the Madden Gallery, which opened this past June at 6363 S Fiddlers Green Cir Suite 110, still reflects the museums outdoor roots.
“In most of these paintings… you can see the outdoors and get a feel of the outdoors,” Madden Leitner said. “But, it's also about your own home and looking out a window and seeing… out towards the mountains and imagining what's beyond those mountains and how that affects your life.”
Marjorie Park features rotating sculptures in an open park space. It’s free to visit on special event days or with Fiddler's Green concert tickets during the warmer months of the year. Lily Brown, an administrative assistant at the museum, said one if its missions is “making art a part of everyday life.”
“We have a lot of Alice in Wonderland themes going through the park, and then we have things that switch throughout the park, as well,” Brown said. “If things are ugly, it's a beautiful thing to look at, and I think another thing that's beautiful about art is that it's different to every person.”
The museum uses money generated from Fiddler’s Green to fund exhibitions and to keep the art free to the public. The museum is open Tuesday through Saturday. Admission to "Beyond the Western Horizon" is free.
