Aspen has long been known as a hub for art and creativity, inviting people to explore and be inspired. Central to the arts and culture scene is a commitment to mind, body, and spirit, commonly known as The Aspen Idea.
The Aspen Idea remains a vital component of the Aspen Institute, the Aspen Music Festival & School, as well as Aspen's inner energy. This energy is part of what makes the city of Aspen a combination of nature and culture with an arts scene rivaling that of bigger cities.
Arts and Culture
The arts and culture community evolved from the Aspen Idea originally established by Aspen’s modern-day founders, Walter and Elizabeth Paepcke. Culture and the arts are at the core of Aspen's vibrant community, with events such as the Aspen Ideas Festival, JAS Aspen Snowmass, the FOOD & WINE Classic, the Aspen Institute, and the Aspen Art Museum. Aspen remains a world-famous art destination with a bustling scene for galleries, art centers, and museums.
The Aspen Art Scene
Aspen is home to multiple museums and art centers that are dedicated to showcasing art from well-established artists as well as those new to the scene. Some of the world’s most influential art dealers and collectors call Aspen home, making Aspen a world-class art destination.
Visitors have plenty to choose from, but here are some of the best Aspen art galleries:
Baldwin Gallery
The Baldwin Gallery is a contemporary art gallery established by Richard Edwards in 1994. Featuring a variety of contemporary artists’ works including painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, video, and installation-based artwork, the Baldwin Gallery is well-recognized at both national and international levels and has support from serious art journals from around the world.
On View
(February 16-March 10)
The Baldwin Gallery’s seventh show is Doug and Mike Starn, Time Takes a Cigarette. The show is accompanied by the gallery’s sixth show with multi-media contemporary artist Matthew Weinstein.
The Starns are internationally recognized for their mixed media works and transcendent photography with a career spanning more than 30 years. Combining traditionally separate disciplines like photography, sculpture, painting, and architecture, they defy categorization. Their largest artistic endeavor, Big Bambú at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2019 was the 9th most attended exhibition in the museum’s history.
The Time Takes a Cigarette exhibition showcases new bodies of large-scale works and is comprised of beautiful mixed-media compositions of light, color, and texture such as expansive cloudscapes that draw the viewer towards the experience of sharing the earth’s continually changing sky. Similarly, Matthew Weinstein’s Twenty Suns exhibition focuses on the sky at sunset and its horizon line.
Hexton Gallery
Hexton Gallery opened in 2018 with a solo exhibition and large-scale mural project for artist and activist Shepard Fairey. The gallery has since moved into a newly renovated location at 477 E. Cooper Ave., and it now offers an extended program from today’s leading mid-career and established contemporary talent. Along with its annual exhibitions and art fair participation, Hexton Gallery publishes and represents artist and institutional projects in the areas of editioned printmaking, sculpture, and artist books.
On View
(February 13-April 30)
Hexton Gallery presents No Straight Lines, a group exhibition featuring works from artists Herbert Bayer, Kenneth Noland, Richard Carter, Evan Hecox, Phillip K. Smith III, and Andrew Huffman.
Hexton's exhibition explores the history of art in Aspen and the surrounding Roaring Fork Valley. No Straight Lines is the second installment tracing the impact of artists, collectors, and institutions on the development of modern Aspen from the late 1950s through today
Aspen Art Museum
Aspen Art Museum is an artist-founded institution that is dedicated to supporting artists in the development of bold ideas to shape the museum and the field of art. Highly attuned to the advancement of the vital ecosystem of art and the critical discourse surrounding it within the context and community of Aspen and beyond, the Aspen Art Museum is both a place and a platform.
The Aspen Art Museum is positioned to make commitments to meaningful change, responding to and driving cultural change.
On View
(December 15-April 7)
The Tighter They’re Wound, the Harder They Unravel is an exhibition from John Chamberlain and the first institutional survey devoted to John Chamberlain in over a decade. Spanning three floors of the museum and arranged in an evocative, cross-temporal mise-en-scène, the exhibition adopts Chamberlain’s embrace of discovery and intuitive approach to scale, fit, and attachment.
(December 15-September 29)
A new exhibition by New York artist Lena Henke, You and your vim is a towering bronze outline of a woman that crowns the rooftop of the Aspen Art Museum. The exhibition is a playful subversion of a drawing by French illustrator and author Tomi Ungerer. The figure is at once an obscure art historical reference, and also an avatar for Henke herself.
(December 15-April 7)
Cauleen Smith’s immersive installation Mines to Caves evolves from the artist’s film program GIMME SHELTER CINEGLYPHS which premiered in September 2022 inside Smuggler’s Mine in Aspen. At Aspen Art Museum, the gallery emulates Smuggler’s darkened, cave-like interior where a reimagined edit of Smith’s animated cinematic hieroglyphs are projected on the mine walls. The moving images of animals and topographies reference cave paintings, while the film reflects on Smith’s desire to return the mine to the mountain and reorient towards an alternative relationship with the planet.
Arts and Cultural Events and Organizations
Alongside Aspen’s rich connection to art and gallery offerings, the town has developed an abundance of organizations and special events dedicated to everything from food, music, film, dance, and more. Few places have this combination of arts, culture, and natural beauty.
Here are some of Aspen’s most well-known cultural events and organizations:
Aspen Music Festival and School
The Aspen Music Festival and School has made Aspen a magnet for the world’s best classically trained musicians and performers since its inception in 1949. Each summer brings roughly 300 individual classic music events as well as an influx of students from ages 10 to 35 who perform throughout the town in the evenings.
FOOD & WINE Classic
This leading culinary event is a must-see festival of three days of cooking demos, wine tastings, and panel discussions alongside world-renowned chefs and wine experts. Considered by many to be the best epicurean festival in the country, attendees have the opportunity to attend seminars by accomplished chefs and sommeliers, sample a variety of food, wine, and spirits, and enjoy the good life at Aspen Mountain.
Intersect Aspen
This art and design fair takes place every summer in the Aspen Ice Garden. Intersect Aspen offers an intimate and curated setting for visitors to encounter modern and contemporary art and design presented by galleries from around the world.
Wheeler Opera House
The grandest and most historic performing arts venue in Aspen hosts concerts, stand-up comedy, film festivals, and other events that draw an audience from far and wide.
Theatre Aspen
Theatre Aspen is a Rocky Mountain summer tradition that features the best of Broadway and more. Theatre Aspen presents professional summer repertory musicals and plays at the Hurst Theatre in Rio Grande Park.
Dance Aspen
Aspen’s only resident dance company, Dance Aspen was created in 2021 when dancers from the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet collaborated to bring high-caliber performing arts to the Roaring Fork Valley. With dancers from around the globe, Dance Aspen brings power, grace, and emotion to the stage.
Aspen Words
Formerly known as the Aspen Writers’ Foundation, Aspen Words has become a platform for aspiring writers to hone their craft through special programs, events featuring prominent contemporary authors and poets, and writer-in-residence programs.
Aspen Shortsfest
This Oscar-qualifying festival is recognized as one of the premier short film festivals in the country. The event is generally held in April at the Wheeler Opera House with select screenings showing at the Crystal Theater in Carbondale.
Aspen Historical Society
Aspen’s remarkable history is preserved thanks to the Aspen Historical Society. Pay a visit to the Wheeler/Stallard Museum in downtown, explore the Ranching Museum, or head out of town and tour an intriguing duo of ghost towns–Ashcroft and Independence.
Aspen Center for Environmental Studies
Aspen Center for Environmental Studies (ACES) fosters a connection between the community and nature with a host of programs offering a focus on eco-education.
Red Brick Center for the Arts
This repurposed red brick schoolhouse is now an arts center offering arts education and experiential year round.
Wintersköl
Aspen’s annual “toast to winter” dates back to 1950 when locals chose to commemorate Aspen’s distinctive mountain way of life with a diverse weekend of events. The four-day festival showcases on-mountain activities, snow sculptures, a soup contest, a craft beer festival, a torchlight descent, and fireworks on Aspen Mountain.
Discover New and Exciting Art Galleries and Cultural Events in Aspen
Come and experience Aspen’s amazing culture and natural beauty and see for yourself what makes it so special. As a guest of Alpine Property, you are invited to use our knowledgeable concierge for local recommendations or assistance with art galleries and exhibitions, or special events going on in town.
Stay in one of our Aspen rentals for all of the comforts of home along with the finest amenities and service to make your stay unforgettable. Reach out to our team if you are interested in learning more about our available properties.
