The Museum of Art Fort Collins (MoA) will open the 21st annual Masks Fundraiser & Exhibition on April 4, running through June 6, 2025.
The exhibition offers two ways to view the masks for sale: in person at the museum and through an online auction at https://fly.causepilot.com/moafc/masks2025.
Mask artists, long-time sponsors, mask buyers and visitors have supported the museum’s mission, helping make this community event a sustained success over the past 20 years. The fundraising goal for this year’s event is $75,000. To date, the museum has raised $31,000 through sponsorships and aims to raise $35,000 through the online auction of more than 224 creative masks from the community. Proceeds from the sale of the masks support the museum’s exhibitions and educational programs.
“The 21st Annual Masks Fundraiser & Exhibition brings the community together through creativity and art, with most participants being non-artists who use their creativity to help the museum thrive,” said Lisa Hatchadoorian, executive director of MoA. “The exhibition has raised more than $2 million over the past 20 years to support the museum’s mission through its exhibitions and programs.”
Over the past two decades, mask artists, most of whom live in Northern Colorado, have designed and donated more than 3,500 masks. New themes are introduced each year, and the unadorned ceramic forms leave the museum, only to return as a collection of unique masks. For the 2025 event, both professional and recreational artists have contributed 224 masks.
“The annual Masks Fundraiser & Exhibition is so community-focused,” Hatchadoorian said. “People love seeing the diversity of masks designed and donated by professional artists, who make their living through art, and community artists, who explore their creative side through a wide variety of materials, themes and styles.”
Major support for the 21st anniversary of the Masks Fundraiser & Exhibition comes from Blue Federal Credit Union, Local IQ and Water Pik. Additional support comes from RE/MAX Advanced, Inc., PNC, Dellenbach Subaru, OtterCares, Bohemian Foundation, Gary and Carol Ann Hixon, and Peter Springberg, MD, and Lindy Burnham, MD.
PAST CONTINUOUS: Kim Garcia & Ajean Lee Ryan, curated by Dinghy Rig in the Peter D. Springberg, MD, Vault Gallery, April 4–June 6, 2025
Ajean Lee Ryan and Kim Garcia will take over the Peter D. Springberg, MD, Vault Gallery at MoA for an installation focused on memory and identity. As Asian Americans, both artists confront a double consciousness—a tension between the transparency of memory and identity. Identity depends on memory, and if memory is slippery, so is the relationship with oneself. This ambiguity is what the artists explore in their work—their distance from themselves.
Kim Garcia is an artist working in sculpture, drawing and painting. Her practice centers on oral storytelling to explore the complexities of inheritance, postcolonial identity and memory. She is the founder of The Cold Read, an online critique group and artist collective, and one of the co-founders of after hours gallery, an art gallery in Los Angeles. Garcia has had solo exhibitions at Phase Gallery (2023), Best Practice (2019) and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (2017). She has also exhibited in group shows at Luis De Jesus, Feia, ICALA, Torrance Art Museum and Human Resources. Garcia, who is based in Los Angeles, earned her BA from UC San Diego and her MFA from UC Irvine.
Ajean Lee Ryan earned her BA in Fine Arts with a concentration in Painting from UCLA and later received her MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from UC Berkeley. She has exhibited nationally and internationally in museums, galleries and non-profit spaces. Ryan is an associate professor of drawing at Colorado State University and currently lives in Loveland, Colorado.
Dinghy Rig is a collaborative, artist-run art production and exhibition program launched by Aitor Lajarin-Encina and Marius Lehene. Garcia and Ryan’s Past Continuous exhibition is the second installment of a long-term collaboration with the Museum of Art Fort Collins. The exhibition will be hosted in the building’s former safety vault room. The project benefits from the generous support of Peter D. Springberg, MD.
