When an angry mob of Aspenites destroyed the artist Donald Lipski\u2019s \u201cBeacon Interrogator\u201d art installation on Aspen Mountain, in the middle of a June night in 1988, the act wasn\u2019t really about the art at all.<\/p>\n
The Aspen Times, in fact, dedicated its editorial pages the following week to the incident and used it as a sort of case study for a town in turmoil and divided against itself over \u2014 as always \u2014 growth, development and economic inequality, specifying the \u201clarge commercial buildings, giant houses, traffic, air pollution, lack of housing, high living costs and all the other drawbacks of runaway growth even though the city has the most stringent land-use and growth controls in the nation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chastising the vandals who destroyed the work and scolding the many locals who had threatened the Aspen Art Museum for installing Lipski\u2019s massive Mylar sheets on Ajax, the Times used the occasion to diagnose a new and bitter character in Aspenites: \u201cResidents take themselves and the issues, even the smallest, too seriously. They are less tolerant of those who may be different or have different ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n
I researched the incident this spring as I was working on a book-length essay about the history of the Aspen Art Museum, for a book to be released Aug. 10 as the museum celebrates its 40th anniversary with a 24-hour party. With full access to the museum\u2019s archives, I read through reams of papers, internal correspondence, donor letters, annual reports, oral histories and studied slides of every exhibition the museum has hosted since 1979. I tracked the museum\u2019s astonishing journey from its beginnings as a wildly ambitious rag-tag artists\u2019 start-up into arguably the best non-collecting art museum in the world.<\/p>\n
Through the lens of the museum, I also saw the history of Aspen\u2019s past four decades and the town\u2019s tumultuous trajectory since the final days of its drop-out hippie era. The museum\u2019s moments of controversy, like the \u201cBeacon Interrogrator\u201d incident, I found, were rarely about art. They were instead flashpoints and battles in the age-old, ongoing \u201csell Aspen or save it\u201d war, where a nonprofit art museum was scapegoated or caught in the crossfire.<\/p>\n
Some examples from the past decade:<\/p>\n
The local electorate\u2019s rejection of the museum\u2019s proposed move to Galena Plaza in 2009, in retrospect, wasn\u2019t about a community rejecting art or not wanting a free, privately funded art museum. It was about mistrust of city officials in the wake of the local government overpaying for property in land deals during its \u201cland-banking\u201d initiative of the pre-recession years and the much-derided $18 million BMC West purchase.<\/p>\n
When the museum\u2019s detractors vociferously protested the City Council\u2019s approval of the new downtown museum in 2010, it wasn\u2019t about the art inside. It was about angst over new development, it was about the \u201cinfill\u201d legislation then reshaping downtown, the loss of the Wienerstube restaurant, it was about the Hecht family\u2019s perceived callousness toward mountain town character and it was exacerbated by the demolition of the Given Institute in 2011 to make way for a massive private home.<\/p>\n
Even the outrage over Cai Guo-Qiang\u2019s use of live tortoises in a 2014 installation as the new museum opened, I\u2019d argue, wasn\u2019t about the artwork. The citizen petition that circulated in the days before the museum\u2019s opening \u2014 and made \u201cTortoise-Gate\u201d an international news story \u2014 came before installation was complete and before the public had seen the artwork (or even pictures of it). Looking back on that bizarre public battle, it\u2019s fair to conclude it was fueled more by fury over the big new building downtown than by the often-problematic use of live animals in contemporary art.<\/p>\n
But the 24-hour party and festivities in 2014 as the new museum opened, conversely, were about art and did forge community bonds.<\/p>\n
The scene at Cai\u2019s \u201cBlack Lightning\u201d daytime firework over Aspen Mountain \u2014 where the billionaire and the ski bum marveled side-by-side \u2014 was a collective experience with the sublime. Late night mobs, this time, made their way through the monumental Yves Klein-David Hammonds joint exhibition and marveled, they filled the free concert and dance party in a cathartic throw-down for a community tired of fighting.<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s 24-hour party and 40th anniversary bash \u2014 including art-making, dancing, open galleries, the return of architect Shigeru Ban and of artist Richard Tuttle \u2014 promises again to bring Aspen together for a few days that are all about the art.<\/p>\n