For many Puebloans, it may be hard to believe, but the 21st century edifice that landed square in the middle of an aging and ignored Santa Fe Avenue more than a half century ago has matured, turning into what is inarguably the arts and cultural jewel of southern Colorado.
In a state where the cultural focus is most often fixed on Denver and the metro area, Pueblo’s Sangre de Cristo Arts and Conference Center has distinguished itself for its imaginative approach to everything from top level art exhibits to a nurturing center for a kaleidoscope of dance, creativity and artistic curiosity.
Opened in 1972 and clustered in a concrete meadow featuring an interstate highway, a long past its prime city arterial and an aging neighborhood, the center has matured bothquietly and gracefully, going from ingenue to cultural north star. Today, it runs under the guidance of CEO and Pueblo native Andy Sanchez.
While Sanchez now occupies the center’s proverbial corner office, he has been connected to the Sangre de Cristo for most of his life. “I was younger than ten-years-old,” he recalled, “when my mother gave me permission to be part of an adult drawing class.” In one way or another, save his time away from the city to earn a graduate degree at CU-Boulder, he has been tethered to his hometown and the center.
In Pueblo, Sanchez has been involved with the city as both a businessman and booster. Prior to his appointment as CEO, a position he held first as interim, he sat on its board of trustees for six years. He said with a degree of pride in his voice that he was announced as its chief executive “on Cinco de Mayo 2023.”
Like an ocean liner, the center has course corrected numerous times over the years, adapting to both economic conditions and community wants and needs. But, he says, it has remained true to its core principles. These principle, Sanchez says, remain “to create artistic, educational and cultural experiences for everyone and we have been delivering for 52 years.”
The Center’s latest effort to share its gifts with Pueblo is the showing of documentarian Ken Burns’ “Leonardo da Vinci,” on Thursday, August 22nd. The showing is in conjunction with Rocky Mountain PBS. It will also show simultane- ously in Grand Junction.
The documentary will highlight the life of an amazing genius of a man, born out of wedlock who went on to create some of the Renaissance’s greatest works or art as well as showcase so many of the fantastic and futuristic ideas he had about science and technology. The four-hour film will debut nationally on September 18-19 on PBS.
The da Vinci film, said Sanchez, is only a single facet of the southern Colorado jewel’s contribution to regional arts and culture. “Over the years,” he said, the center has grown mightily “through the tenacity and planning of our stakeholders.”
In June 2022 the center hosted “Da Vinci: Machines and Robotics,” an exhibition that featured more than 60 recreations of the Renaissance master’s drawings and robotics. Over the period of his life, da Vinci put to paper ideas of armored cars, submarines, machine guns and parachutes.
“Our emphasis was on STEM,” said Sanchez. Through STEM—science, technology, engineering and mathematics—he suggested, “we were able to reflect on da Vinci’s impact and artistry in time.”
Though the selection of Santa Fe Avenue as its home may once have been thought odd, Sanchez said it has worked out well. “When people come here, the majority of them are from around the state.”
Getting off the nearby I-25 First Street exit, it’s easy to find the center. “People can come here and see just what is here; the arts, the artisans, everything that Pueblo is all about. It’s a no-brainer.”
For locals, especially the city’s students, the Sangre de Cristo is a magnet for the arts. “We have a great partnership with the schools,” Sanchez said. But beyond Pueblo, Sanchez said there is also a concerted effort to share the center by reaching out to surrounding counties to come into the city to see what is showing.
The Sangre de Cristo is currently showing the ‘Portrait of Nature: Myriads of the Gods’ exhibit. The showing runs through January 11th. In addition it also has a permanent Helen Thatcher White Gallery, the Buell Children’s Museum and schools of art and dance. The Thatcher White Gallery holds the country’slargest Gene Kloss collection.
Kloss, who died in 1996, is world renowned for her art depicting cultures of the Southwest, with a special emphasis on Native American and early Hispanic communities.
For more information on the Sange de Cristo Arts and Conference Center including booking space for special events, call 719.295.7200. The center is located at 210 N. Santa Fe Avenue.
