When Colorado art museums need money for an endowment or a new building, they typically turn to foundations, corporations and individuals who share ties to the region.
That certainly has been the case with the Denver Art Museum’s soon-to-be-completed drive to raise $28 million in private support for its $90.5 million addition. More than 90 percent of the funds have come from Colorado donors.
But the city of Denver’s proposed museum devoted to 20th-century painter Clyfford Still is shaping up quite differently. Local backers and outside philanthropists believe the project – initially estimated at about $20 million for a building and endowment – could draw almost as much financial support from outside the state as inside.
“They’re going to seek, and they’re going to get it,” said Morgan Spangle, executive director of the New York-based Dedalus Foundation, which was founded by artist Robert Motherwell.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the larger foundations – we’re just a modest artist’s foundation – but Samuel (H.) Kress or some of those other really heavy foundations give some significant money to see this thing come about.”
Along with such celebrated artists as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, Still was a pivotal figure in abstract expressionism, a movement that emerged in the 1940s and ’50s and shifted the center of the art world from Paris to New York City.
Although the painter has always been respected within the art world, he never gained the broader fame of many of his peers. Still was something of a curmudgeon. He hoarded a large share of his paintings, keeping them off the market and out of view.
Because of the scarcity of his works in the public realm, there has been keen interest by scholars and others in the art world in the 750 paintings and more than 1,400 works on paper that became part of Still’s estate after his death in 1980.
So when the artist’s widow, Patricia A. Still, agreed in August 2004 to donate the works to Denver, the gift sparked international headlines.
“People have been waiting and wondering what was going to happen with the Still estate for years and years,” Spangle said. “And I think the news it is going to land safely some place as prominent as Denver is going to be greeted not only with a huge sigh of relief from the international art crowd but also an expectation of something great.”
Along with that expectation, he said, will come an interest from foundations and collectors in supporting the construction of a museum to house the donated works.
Original estimates placed the project’s cost at $7 million to $10 million, plus another $10 million for an operations endowment. But project director Dean Sobel said exact figures have not been set and will be determined in part by how much money appears to be available.
“We are in our quiet phase of fundraising,” he said. “We’re talking to people and trying to get an indication of where the support is and at what level.”
In the same way, Sobel said, it is too early to predict how much funding might come from within Colorado versus the rest of the country and perhaps even elsewhere in the world.
“That’s a percentage I don’t have yet because that’s exactly the question we’re trying to answer,” he said. “I would say that at least 50 percent would come from this region.”
Whatever the final breakdown turns out to be, he is confident the percentage of outside support will be significantly more than that for the Denver Art Museum’s expansion or a proposed permanent home for the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver.
One non-Denver resident who came forward to support the Still museum soon after the donation of the artist’s estate was Bud Knapp, a former publisher who collects abstract-expressionist art. He spends most of his time in Los Angeles but has a second home near Edwards.
An admirer of Still’s paintings since the 1960s, Knapp was thrilled to learn via a Denver Post article that the artist’s holdings were heading to Denver. Through a mutual friend, he arranged a meeting about the project with Mayor John Hickenlooper when the mayor was in Vail for a wedding.
Following their discussion, the collector agreed to become one of 19 members of an advisory committee helping with the foundation of the Still museum.
Knapp said he has talked to a few other collectors he knows across the country; all expressed interest in supporting the institution.
“I don’t know how much money they would want to give,” he said, “but they certainly respect Still and are more curious about Denver and what Denver is doing.”
How soon a final budget will be set for the project and the first donations announced is still unknown.
“There’s interest,” Knapp said. “But there are so many questions that there’s not going to be any check-writing at this point.”
Fine arts critic Kyle MacMillan can be reached at 303-820-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com.
