The big story in the Front Range art scene over the past five years has been the explosive growth in museums, from the addition of a $29 million institution devoted to artist Clyfford Still to an array of sleek new buildings and additions.

With this new construction has naturally come increased curatorial firepower, like the addition of Nora Burnett Abrams at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, and more and often better-quality exhibitions.

But as museums take major strides forward, the area’s alternative art centers seem to be slipping backward, cutting curatorial positions and settling for inconsistent and often unambitious exhibition schedules.

The latest organization to take a step in reverse is the Foothills Art Center in Golden, which has always struggled between being a folksy community art center and playing a larger, more active role in the metropolitan Denver scene.

Under the leadership of curator Michael Chavez, who was forced out earlier this year, the art center tended toward the latter, presenting some of its most daring and exciting shows ever. Examples include “Habitat,” which explored how technology, development and consumerism have affected the global environment.

Chavez has been replaced not with another curator but someone who holds the watered-down title of coordinator of exhibitions and public programs. Will the art center continue the adventurous, big-picture shows Chavez conceived? It’s doubtful.

To understand why any of this matters, it helps to think of an art scene like an ecosystem. Just as every organism plays a critical, interrelated role in the health of an ecosystem, all the components of an art scene must be vital and growing for it to thrive.

A key component is alternative art centers, an all-inclusive term that essentially refers to any nonprofit exhibition space.

Because they do not have the sales pressures of a commercial gallery and are free of the attendance quotas, high-profile scrutiny and other institutional constraints of a museum, they can be more independent and daring with what they show.

RedLine, a $2.5 million studio and exhibition space that opened with considerable fanfare in 2008 in a former warehouse at 2350 Arapahoe St., held the promise of being Denver’s premier such art center.

But it is has proven to be a major disappointment. Instead of becoming a must-visit venue with consistently high-level shows that fill key gaps in Denver’s art ecosystem, its offerings have been erratic both in terms of focus and quality.

The reason is simple. It does not have a curator who can provide a clear, coherent vision for its presentations and give it direction and purpose. Instead, the center often accepts whatever exhibition proposals come over the transom, and the results are predictably mixed.

Shift in Arvada

Much the same can be said about the art program at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities. Under the leadership of Kathy Andrews, who served first as its curator and held title of gallery/museum director in 1993-2002, the center was a significant player on the Front Range contemporary art scene.

It identified promising up-and-coming artists and tracked trends on the local scene as well as introducing viewers to artists outside the region.

But its influence has waned since. Gene Sobczak, who took over as the Arvada Center’s executive director in 2007, chose not to fill the center’s vacant curator’s position a year later despite conducting a national search for a replacement.

Like RedLine, the result has been exhibitions that all over the map. While Arvada has collaborated on some large-scale shows with such local institutions as the Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art, other offerings have been forgettable.

Curators are not a luxury. They bring artistic background and knowledge that is essential to a lucid, well-conceived and relevant exhibition program.

Their absence at three of the metropolitan area’s alternative art centers keeps the programs from realizing their full potential and hurts the Denver-area art scene in general.

Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com

