The Denver Botanic Gardens announced today that it will purchase a large sculpture from Dale Chihuly, the renowned glass artist whose work has drawn record crowds through its gates this summer.

The Garden’s “Chihuly” exhibit, which features scores of colorful, curling shards sprinkled across the grounds, has already pushed attendance to 1.1 million for the year. The previous high mark was 879,000 set over 12 months in 2013.

The purchased piece is not part of the current show, which runs through Nov. 30. Instead, Chihuly will make a new sculpture, customized for a spot in the center of a pond in the recently opened Ellipse rose garden on the south side.

The sculpture will consist of 750 pointy red, orange and yellow rods that will shoot off a central axis. The work will look like it is floating above the water.

Chihuly, who was in Denver as the garden unveiled a rendering Saturday, said the sculpture, titled “Colorado” is inspired by the local sunsets. “I just tried to figure out what would be the best piece for this location.” he said.

The garden would not disclose how much it is paying for the work, which will measure 12 feet high by 6 feet wide. The purchase is privately funded with major donations coming from philanthropists Robert and Judi Newman and the RC Kemper Charitable Trust.

The garden’s board chair, Jandel Allen-Davis, said “the question of will we consider making a piece of this amazing art part of the permanent collection,” began arising soon after the exhibit opened June 14.

The garden started out shopping on its own backyard, then decided it would commission an original. Donors liked the idea so much that fund-raising was more a matter of “aggregating people’s offers” than asking for cash, said CEO Brian Vogt.

No doubt, the piece was pricey. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston purchased a Chihuly of a somewhat similar style for $1 million in 2011 after a successful exhibit there. The Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix raised $800,000 to buy a Chihuly following its 2011 show.

The Denver Botanic Gardens, which receives about $3.5 million in local government funds each year, expects the work to be installed by Christmas. Its display will stand as a permanent souvenir of a surprisingly successful 2014.

“One way that you can keep a memory alive is to take a little snippet of it and keep it around forever,” said garden CEO Brian Vogt.

Ray Mark Rinaldi: 303-954-1540, rrinaldi@denverpost.com or twitter.com/rayrinaldi