CHANDLER: Eclectic works highlight Madden Museum of Art's first show

By Mary Voelz Chandler, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published November 21, 2008 at 3 p.m.

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Photo by Fentress Architects

Roger Leitner's granite and sandstone replica of the Chartres Labyrinth, Todd Siler's mural Ascencion and Lonnie Hanzon's Chandelier Chardin awash in projected light fill the atrium of the new Palazzo Verdi at Fiddler's Green.

Photo by Joslyn Art Museum

Jackson Pollock's 1947 Galaxy, oil, aluminum paint and small gravel on canvas, on loan from the Joslyn Art Museum.

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Every fall art season has its wild-card moment; this year that is the Madden Museum of Art.

Ensconced off the luxurious atrium of the new Palazzo Verdi at Fiddler's Green, the museum is six different things in one.

* It's a place for developer John Madden to show work from his collection, which hovers all over the stylistic map, from animal bronzes by Dan Ostermiller to atmospheric paintings by Jasper Francis Cropsy to florid Italian oils.

* Madden also has borrowed big-ticket works from the Joslyn Museum of Art in Omaha, an institution for which he worked as a teenager back in Nebraska. These works hang back in a locked gallery, and for good reason: The initial loans include a fine painting by Thomas Moran and a smallish Jackson Pollock - smallish, that is, for Pollock, and unfortunately entombed in a Plexiglas case that obscures its textural qualities.

* Numerous other works are on loan from area collectors, artists and out-of-town galleries.

* It's a family affair, since Madden commissioned art for the atrium from two people associated with the Museum of Outdoor Arts, whose director is his daughter, Cynthia Madden Leitner. (That museum used to be in Madden's great old Harlequin Plaza building but is now in the Englewood Civic Center.)

The Palazzo Verdi atrium pieces include an inset floor labyrinth, replicating one in the cathedral at Chartres, by Roger Leitner, Cynthia Madden Leitner's husband. There's also a huge glass and LED chandelier by Lonnie Hanzon, creative director of the Museum of Outdoor Arts.

Anchoring this five-story space: a soaring red/yellow/gold abstracted mural by Todd Siler, an area artist who works in many mediums but here addresses the luminous qualities of paint and interplay of colors.

Madden's own museum also is now showing a selection of photographs by his sister, Susan Madden Lankford.

* The Madden Museum serves as a tenant amenity of sorts, along with a new restaurant, Mangia Bevi, a rare find in this sprawling complex of office buildings.

* And though there are no price tags, many of the pieces in the museum are for sale, including some of Madden's own collection as well as those on loan from artists and galleries.

In short, it's a diverse operation.

Museum executive director and curator Abbi Levine calls it "a hybrid."

Levine has overseen the creation of the museum and the installation of the first show, "An Observable Universe," which a text panel describes as an "eclectic collection that urges you to reflect upon your own place in the universe."

Eclectic? Try personal, or maybe driven by the idea of the sumptuous, or the credo of "more is more." In this giant space, there is a windmill by Robert Rauschenberg, numerous tower pieces by Todd Siler, work by Thomas Hart Benton and Milton Avery, a scroll painting by Chin Chi, a giant bronze dancer by Kent Ullberg and an alcove devoted to paintings by Daniel Sprick.

And that's just the beginning, work tied together by a pretty tenuous thread.

But what does it mean? To my thinking, long-time developer Madden decided to spend his money - and put his art - inside a new building rather than on the outside, as he did with the old Museum of Outdoor Arts and Samson Park.

The 15-story Palazzo Verdi indeed is marked by a monumental green granite entry surround, but the rest of it is beige and buff concrete and glass. The design by Fentress Architects is quiet as a mouse, a far cry from the flamboyant profile of Fentress' proposal for Bell Tower.

Compare this with other Madden properties clad in Carrara marble (the Carrara), travertine marble (the Tuscany) and Spanish granite (Plaza Tower One), and Palazzo Verdi is a building for straitened times. The verdi may be apt because of the green granite, but the palazzo is an overstatement for a relatively simple slab with a rounded roofline.

Until, that is, you get inside, where the atrium explodes in color and light. The museum is carefully crafted, though exposed fireproofing on the ceiling beams is sort of raw.

Through Levine, Madden declined to address the cost of the operation. "(This) is his baby," Levine said. "He wants to share his art."

Upcoming shows include one devoted to intimacy and another to portraits. I can't imagine what that will bring, except another opportunity to enter a really different world of art, and perhaps be able to view Bouguereau's Le Printemps (The Return of Spring), a "more is more" painting in every sense of the word, considering the swarm of little angels. The Madden is working on the loan request now.

Mary Voelz Chandler is the art and architecture critic. Chandlerm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2677

Madden Museum of Art

* What: New venue for art, off the lobby of a new building developed by John Madden

* Where: Palazzo Verdi, 6363 S. Fiddler's Green Circle, Greenwood Village

* On view: Inaugural installation, "An Observable Universe," through February

* Admission: $10, $7 seniors and students, $5 school groups

* Information: 303-763-1970; themaddenmuseum.org

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