6 minute read
Colorado
Capitol history is on eBay State wants it back
BY JESSE PAUL THE COLORADO SUN
Sage Naumann, a former sta er at the Colorado legislature, was conducting his occasional nerd search of state relics on eBay when a pricey item caught his eye: “ORIGINAL BRONZE WALL SCONCE FROM THE COLORADO STATE CAPITOL BLDG. IN DENVER COLO.” e list price of the enormous artifact? Available from a Littleton seller for the cool price of $8,995, or $431.82 a month over 24 months with PayPal credit. Local pickup only.
“Own a piece of Colorado history,” the listing says.
East High’s school colors — with shirts reading “Angels against gun violence,” and signs saying “End the silence, stop gun violence.”
Once inside the capitol they lled the gallery around the state Senate, looking down on lawmakers doing their work.
Protesters remember East High student killed by a shooting
Luis Garcia died due to a gunshot-related injury he sustained shortly after leaving school Feb. 13.
CALENDAR: PAGE 11 e March 3rd demonstrators included Garcia’s teammates on the East High soccer team. Junior Grant Elliot said his message to lawmakers is simple: “ is can’t keep happening.
Two teenagers were arrested, but as of March 3, no charges had been led in the case.
“ is was so hard for everyone around us and I can’t imagine going through this again,” said Elliot.
SEE WALK OUT, P6
Naumann posted about his discovery on social media earlier this year, prompting a short blurb on a political news website. at tipped o the legislature’s Capitol Building Advisory Committee, responsible for maintaining the historic integrity of all things Colorado Capitol. e panel quickly determined it wants the sconce — a decorative light xture — back. Like, yesterday.
“ is is clearly state property and it is the responsibility of the Capitol Building Advisory Committee to
SEE HISTORY, P2 keep state property in the Capitol,” Jeanette Chapman, a nonpartisan sta er for the committee, said during a hearing last week. e panel is debating how to retrieve the xture. Ideas on the table include purchasing the sconce (it’s unclear where the money would come from), sending the Colorado State Patrol to seize the item (that’s been done with other Capitol relics), or asking the seller to donate the large and expensive light xture back to the state, perhaps as a tax writeo . e panel also is trying to determine if the sconce was stolen or procured legally.
“It’s really hard to ascertain what’s stolen property and what’s not,” said Kurt Morrison, who sits on the committee and works as a lobbyist for Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser. “For all we know, in the 1940s the legislature could have upgraded all their lighting and they put those up for sale and someone legally bought that.”
Morrison said if the sconce was illegally acquired, the eBay listing is likely to be pulled down by the seller quickly, never to be found again, once they learn the state wants it back. One committee member halfjokingly suggested the panel reach out to eBay’s lobbyist for help.
Rep. William Lindstedt, a Broomeld Democrat who sits on the committee, reminded the panel that items posted for sale on eBay are sometimes o ered for only a limited time. “It could just disappear tomorrow,” he said. “Just something to consider.” e eBay listing has prompted a larger discussion about how to get missing Capitol relics back when they are discovered. e Capitol Building Advisory Committee openly debated last week pursuing legislation that would make it easier to reclaim historic items. is isn’t, after all, the rst time that a valuable object from the
Capitol, which opened in 1894, has turned up for sale.
In 2004, a door knob from the Capitol was listed on eBay. e knobs are valuable and tough to replace, so the Colorado State Patrol was sent to retrieve it.
(A similar knob was sold on eBay earlier this month by a seller in Brule, Nebraska, who claimed: “I am told this was acquired directly from the Colorado state Capitol when it was remodeled around 1952 to 1953.”)
State o cials may have some legal authority to retrieve Capitol history, but Nicole Myers, a lawyer with the O ce of Legislative Legal Services, said the power isn’t absolute.
“We’ve looked into whether the General Assembly would have any recourse,” she told the advisory committee. “I don’t have a de nitive answer.”
Senate Majority Leader Dominick Moreno, a Commerce City Democrat who sits on the Capitol Building Advisory Committee, believes the state’s legal footing depends on when the sconce was installed.
“ e provision of statute that I think is most applicable here is around whether this sconce is original,” he said during last week’s committee hearing. “ e statute is pretty clear that furniture original to the state Capitol building shall remain in the state Capitol at all times.” e seller wrote on their eBay listing that they believe the sconce was removed during Capitol restoration in the 1950s. “Some of the original ttings were removed and discarded,” the listing says. “ is is one of those original xtures.” e seller posted that the sconce has “shu ed around for about the last 70 years or so.” ey estimate the to turn it around. beauty, physicality and potential are seen,” states a news release. e ASLD opened in 1987, with artists teaching 100 students that rst year and pushing them to reach their potential. Today, the league operates from the Sherman School at 200 Grant St. in the Speer/West Washington Park area. More than 14,000 students attend its classes, workshops, teen studios and summer camps.
Legislative sta ers believe the gasand-electric sconce, which has glass shades etched with the state seal, was once displayed in the governor’s o ce. Former state Sen. Lois Court, a Denver Democrat who chairs the building advisory committee, said that “heightens the conversation” around its importance.
ASLD’s Visiting Artist Series got started in 2003. e BIPOC focus was added in 2021 with Kevin Snipes, a ceramicist who wants to combat the inequity of opportunities for artists of color and thereby enrich the Denver arts scene.
“We started this residency as an acknowledgement geared to BIPOC, starting with the idea that the art world is harder to access because of racism,” said Tessa Crisman, communications manager at ASLD. “So we wanted to make this program to provide resources to artists who might be given those resources, and to connect our community and di erent voices than those that teach every day.”
Roberts is the second person to ll the position. She is originally from Detroit and was living in San Francisco when she learned about the Denver residency, which includes housing and nancial support.
“I was a little hesitant because I didn’t know anything about Denver or the Denver art scene,” she said. But “I was particularly attracted to this organization because I had been working as a professional dancer in New York City.” roughout her work, Roberts tells the stories of people often overlooked, and lets “these overlooked subjects know that their beauty, physicality and potential are seen,” ASLD said in a news release. e teen workshop Roberts instructed including her teaching the students the basics of photography, such as lighting and how to direct models during photo shoots.
An injury halted her dancing for about eight months. She found a New York organization that was similar to ASLD and took classes in photography subjects such as how to shoot and edit.
ASLD’s selection process includes a panel of community members who assess applicants on the quality of their work, how their work ts in with media currently o ered at ASLD, and the clarity of their plans for both community engagement and personal growth as an artist throughout the residency, Crisman said.
“Natalia was chosen for her mastery of dance and photography, as well as her excitement around building artistic community as a new Denverite,” Crisman added.
Roberts moved to Denver in early 2022. She divides her time several ways, including having open studio events, teen and adult photographing workshops, and preparing an exhibition scheduled for this summer. It is slated to open mid-June and run through the end of July, when the residency ends.
It showed Roberts that “there’s a learning curve for me in teaching teenagers photography,” she said.
“By the end of the last couple of classes, I let them make choices for themselves. ey did some really amazing things.” e residency is twofold, giving Roberts her own studio space where she can photograph models for projects.
Roberts also has a duty to promote community engagement.
“She’s been o ering tours of the studio to her audience,” Crisman said. “ ey can ask about her creative process.”
Roberts will conduct a master class in photography for adults titled “Photography Abstraction, Surrealism and Storytelling with the Human Form.” It’s scheduled for March 11-12.
Roberts said the best thing about the residency is getting her own, dedicated workspace.
“It’s all pretty amazing,” she said.
“In photography, you are constantly having to rent space and manipulate it, or set up a space in your kitchen, or bathroom or backyard. It’s always a hurried situation. ere’s a lot of negotiating with other people.”
She cited another bene t: “You don’t have to worry about breaking it down and setting it up for the next shoot. You have more energy to spend on the craft of photography.” is experience has given Roberts the freedom to work on and develop her own style more deeply, she said.
“So much of art-making now, you have to make it quick, (and) you have to make it cheap in order to make a living,” Roberts said. “Perhaps more than anything else, it enables us to play and make bad art, (and) learn how to make it good art. Without getting to experiment, you can’t grow.”
