Over 130 pieces of art are on display at Anderson Ranch Arts Center as part of Ranch Week, the ranch’s annual celebration of art, community and creativity.
Today marks the beginning of Ranch Week at Anderson Ranch Arts Center, an annual celebration of art, community and creativity. The center will be bustling with events all week and wraps up Saturday with a picnic and auction.
“Ranch Week is our biggest week of the year,” said Peter Waanders, president and CEO of Anderson Ranch. “It’s a real celebration.”
The Ranch Gala takes place on Wednesday and will honor Marilyn Minter as the 2026 International Artist Honoree — an award presented to globally recognized artists whose work reflects the highest level of artistic achievement and whose careers have fundamentally influenced contemporary art.
Minter’s practice addresses beauty, gender and media imagery over a career that spans five decades.
A film about Minter will be shown at the Aspen Film Isis Theater at 6 p.m. today. It’s called “Pretty Dirty: the Life and Times of Marilyn Minter,” and a Q&A featuring Minter and producer/director Amanda Benchley, moderated by Producer Sue Hostetler, is planned. The film focuses on Minter’s evolution from the 1970s to today.
Minter was born in 1948 in Shreveport, Louisiana. Her earliest work featured raw, candid photos of her alcoholic mother’s daily life. Her work received praise from renowned photographer Diane Arbus, which helped launch Minter’s career.
A Marilyn Minter painting, “After Guston, #25 (shoe),” is part of a body of work that looks at femininity and fashion and how it is portrayed in culture.
She received a bachelor’s degree in 1970 from the University of Florida at Gainesville and a master’s of fine arts in 1972 from Syracuse University in New York.
Minter melded photography and painting and went from depicting the everyday life of women to more provocative subjects like the feminine body and pornography. There was a critical backlash toward her work which only made her dive more deeply into the female body and sexuality and how they were portrayed in popular culture and fashion.
Minter’s work has been featured in numerous group shows, including the 2006 Whitney Biennial in New York. Other notable exhibitions include the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (1992); Dia Center for the Arts, New York (1993); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2005); and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland (2010).
“Marilyn Minter is someone who really redefined how beauty can function in painting,” said Andrea Jenkins Wallace, vice president of artistic affairs at Anderson Ranch. “She does these hyper-detailed close-ups of lips and skin and glitter and fashion imagery. She pulls inspiration from advertising and fashion photography.
“Instead of beauty being passive or decorative, it becomes more seductive and unstable, kind of messy. She’s really one of the defining artists of the late 20th century and into the 21st century.”
A picnic at the center will wrap up the festivities on Saturday. This free event celebrates the 60th anniversary of Anderson Ranch. Guests will enjoy live music, children’s art activities, a picnic lunch and the center’s silent auction featuring more than 130 works by leading contemporary artists and accomplished local creators.
The event is free and open to the public. Registration is appreciated. More information on all events can be found at andersonranch.org.
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