Aspen In The Summer At Anderson Ranch Arts Center
I’ve been going to Aspen since I was a teenager. At first, it was just for the skiing. Then I discovered that, as is true with most ski resorts, there is more to do there in the summer.
Over the years, summer in Aspen has grown to have a dizzying array of activities, from seminars at the Aspen Institute and the Aspen Ideas Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, the Food & Wine Classic, the Aspen Museum AIR Festival, to name but a few of the summer events. With summer, hiking, biking, dining and shopping become full time sports, in what I like to call the Switzerland of America.
However, until my recent visit to Aspen and to Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village, I never realized the extent to which Aspen has become a center for contemporary Art or the extent to which art is part of Aspen-Snowmass’ DNA.
Anderson Ranch is a four-and-a-half-acre art center that offers classes in pottery, ceramics, photography, sculpture, painting, printmaking, 3D fabrication, woodworking, and metalworks, to people of all ages and all abilities. At the same time, artists come to the ranch as a retreat or to experiment in new mediums, to give lectures, workshops, and to hold public conversations about their work.
Anderson Ranch’s cross-disciplinary and welcoming pluralistic approach to arts education is part of its and Aspen’s DNA. While in Aspen I met with (and got to hang out with) Peter Waanders, President and Chief Executive Officer of Anderson Ranch, Liz Ferrill, Artistic Director of Painting, Drawing & Printmaking (and who leads the Artist in Residence Program and the Critical Dialogue Program), and Evan Soroka, an Aspen native who is Anderson Ranch’s digital media manager, each of whom struck me as incredibly happy to be able to be part of Anderson Ranch.
“Aspen has always been about the meeting of mind, body and the spiritual,” Waanders told me.
The story of Aspen begins with Walter Paepcke, the son of German immigrants who took over his father’s lumber mill and box-making company in Chicago. Paepcke built the company into the highly successful Container Corporation of America which, in turn, became known for commissioning great graphic designers and artists for their campaigns including Herbert Bayer, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Fernand Leger, Leonard Baskin, Ben Shahn, Joseph Cornell, and Willem de Kooning.
In 1946, Walter and Elizabeth Paepcke founded the Aspen Skiing Corporation, opening a chairlift on Aspen Mountain that same year. In 1951, seeking to create a forum for his passions, Paepcke founded the International Design Conference in Aspen (IDCA), which was modeled on the Bauhaus philosophy of collaboration between modern art, design, and commerce, and was led by Bauhaus member Herbert Bayer, with attendance by such design and art luminaries as Josef Albers, Louis Kahn. And Charles Eames. Paepcke believed that good design was good business, and he invited fellow tycoons such as Stanley Marcus of Neiman Marcus, and other executives to attend. The IDCA was soon joined by sister organizations, the Aspen Institute and the Aspen Music Festival.
In 1966, as the Snowmass ski area was preparing to open, the Paepckes decided Aspen needed an arts center. They turned to American ceramicist Paul Soldner who chose an old sheep farm, Anderson Ranch, near Snowmass Village as the location for his center. Soldner brought in friends, colleagues, and other artists, including Peter Volkous who had taught ceramics at Black Mountain College and would go on to found the ceramics department at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles.
Today, those early days are looked on fondly as the era of “hippie potters.” Soldner and Voulkos were the mainstays of the ceramics center which they called “The Center of the Hand.” They were soon joined by Cherie Hiser’s photography program, called “The Center of the Eye.” In the years that followed David Ellsworth launched a woodturning program, and a painting workshop was offered as well. Sam Maloof taught a woodworking workshop. In 1978 a printmaking studio was established.
Anderson Ranch, Waanders said, “is a makers organization” that prioritizes “process over final product.”
In the 1980s, not only did Anderson Ranch become a year-round center with winterized barns, but Anderson Ranch was deeded all its property and buildings (which is as amazing as it is fortunate – imagine owning almost five acres of land in Aspen today!), and a visiting Artist program began. Over the years visiting artists have included Laurie Anderson, Christo, Takashi Nakazato, Starn Twins, Dennis Hopper, Maya Lin, James Rosenquist, Sally Mann, Larry Bell, and Jennifer Bartlett. In the 1990s a digital media lab was launched. Other artists who have participated in Anderson Ranch programs include Steve McQueen, Mickalene Thomas, Catherine Opie, and Frank Stella,
Each summer Anderson Ranch hosts a series of public artist lectures and Q&A sessions. Past participants include Marina Abramović (2013), The Haas Brothers (2016), Doug Aitken (2017), Njideka Akunyili Crosby (2018), Sanford Biggers (2019, Liz Larner (2022), Mickalene Thomas (2023), and Charles Gaines (2024), among others.
Touring the facilities at Anderson Ranch, it is hard to imagine any artist having access to as great a range of tools, machines, programs, and the people who can administer them. I walked through a large room that contained kiln after kiln: large ones, small ones, huge ones, wood fired, and gas powered, as well as 3-D clay printers. It is no wonder that so many artists want to come to the Ranch to experiment, learn, and extend their practice.
The week before I arrived, Rainer Judd and Flavin Judd who administer the Donald Judd estate were there, and in the following weeks there would be lectures, conversations and visits with Kelly Akashi, Shepard Fairey, Catherine Opie, Dawoud Bey, and Issy Wood. The Summer Series is curated by Summer Series Creative Director and CULTURED magazine founder and Editor-in-Chief Sarah Harrelson.
Aspen today is very much home to the wealthy. The joke/not-really-a-joke is that in Aspen the Billionaires are pushing out the Millionaires. No question that housing for those that work in Aspen is no longer affordable. You only need to walk the well-maintained streets of Aspen to find yourself surrounded by luxury brand retail store after retail store, such as Valentino, Prada, Dior, and Loro Piana.
That being said, Aspen has always been a place, like New York and Los Angeles, where people who have been financially successful elsewhere choose to have a second home. Aspen’s summer residents come from all over the country and are often art collectors themselves who appreciate and support Anderson Ranch. During my visit I met dedicated ranch board members from Indianapolis, Houston, Chicago, Davenport, and Los Angeles.
Anderson Ranch also holds an annual fundraising event, which is the culmination of Ranch Week, with a live and silent auction of artworks, as well as having an International Artist Award honoree, who for 2025, is artist, filmmaker, and philanthropist Titus Kaphar, a 2018 MacArthur Grant Award recipient.
Kaphar is both an extraordinary artist as well as an exceptional human being. During Ranch Week, Kaphar held a screening of his feature film Exhibiting Forgiveness at the iconic and recently restored Isis Theater. Exhibiting Forgiveness is a very poetic, sensitive, and visually beautiful account of an artist’s struggle regarding the father who traumatized and abandoned him, starring Andre Holland and Andra Day. It is also an investigation of the lead character’s relationship with his mother, his wife, his own son and how his inner turmoil plays out in his paintings, his choice of subject matter, as well as in his relationships with his gallerist and his collectors.
After the screening, Kaphar was in conversation with Susan Wrubel, Executive and Artistic Director of Aspen Film where they discussed how the film, which can be seen on Hulu, is about “correcting generational trauma,”
The following day, in conversation with documentary filmmaker Debi Wisch, Kaphar discussed his journey from Michigan to California, his discovery of art history, and the many attempts he made before being accepted into Yale’s MFA program in art. Kaphar is known for his works that investigate art history and the erasure of Black lives.
Kaphar said that he sees his work as “neither Demonizing, nor Deifying.”
This was followed by a lunch where Kaphar discussed his NXTHVN (Next Haven) project, a not-for-profit arts studio located in two former manufacturing plants in the Dixwell neighborhood of New Haven, Connecticut that opened in 2019, offering studio internships to local high school students over 15, and to visiting artists who mentor them. Kaphar is hoping to create NXTHVN centers all over the country.
Kaphar often tells his interns about their work: “I don’t care how many likes you get, if everything you make succeeds, then you are not trying hard enough.”
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Aspen offers other art experiences as well. There is the Hexton Contemporary Art Gallery right in the center of Aspen which just ended an exhibition of new work by Andy Millner, and the Aspen Art Museum which has a wonderful Sherrie Levine exhibition (Levine’s work remains perplexing); and striking installations by Solange Pessoa and Carol Rama. The Aspen Art Museum’s own annual auction ArtCrush is live online through August 2nd, with works by Anni Albers, Alex Katz and Michael Stipe. And, finally, no visit to Aspen is complete for me without checking in at the Woody Creek Tavern, Hunter Thompson’s old hangout, where the burgers are as great as ever.
Aspen in the summer can become the best of habits. This was my first visit to Anderson Ranch. It won’t be my last.