The Museum of Art Fort Collins (MoA) will open the 22nd Annual Masks Fundraiser & Exhibition with a VIP reception from 4-8 p.m. Thursday, April 2. The exhibition runs from April 3-June 5.
The annual event offers two ways to view the masks for sale: both in person at the museum and through an online auction at fly.causepilot.com/moafc/masks-2026.
Mask artists and long-time sponsors, mask buyers and visitors have supported the museum’s mission to make this creative community event a sustained success over the past 22 years. The fundraising goal for this year’s project is $75,000. The museum has raised $30,000 through sponsorships and hopes to raise $35,000 through the online auction of more than 247 creative masks from the community. The proceeds support the core exhibitions and educational programs of the museum.
“The 22nd Annual Masks Fundraiser & Exhibition brings the community together through creativity and art with the majority of masks participants being non-artists and utilizing their creativity to help the museum thrive,” says Lisa Hatchadoorian, executive director of MoA. “The annual exhibition is a community favorite that over the past 22 years has raised more than $2.2 million to support the museum’s mission through our exhibitions and programs.”
During the past 22 years, mask artists, most of whom live in Northern Colorado, have designed and donated more than 4,000 masks. Each year brings new themes as the unadorned ceramic forms leave the museum and return as a creative collection of unique masks. Professional artists, whose creativity is their economic mainstay, and recreational artists, who respond to their need to express their creativeness in ingenious styles, have created 247 masks for the 2026 Masks Fundraiser & Exhibition.
“The Annual Masks Fundraiser & Exhibition is so community focused,” Hatchadoorian says. “People love seeing the diversity of the masks designed and donated by professional artists, who make their living through art, and community artists who explore their creative side through a dizzying array of materials, themes and styles.”
Major support for the 22nd Annual Masks Fundraiser & Exhibition comes from Waterpik, RE/MAX Advanced, Inc and Gary and Carol Ann Hixon. Dedicated support comes from Blue Federal Credit Union, Dellenbach Motors, Jerry’s Artarama and Dr. Peter Springberg.
“Minilab for Future Inspection of Color: Toward a Chromatic Forensics”
This solo exhibition by Juan Bastardo was curated by Dinghy Rig in the Dr. Peter D. Springberg Vault Gallery and will be on display April 3-June 5.
Guadalajara-based Mexican artist, Juan Bastardo, presents “Minilab for Future Inspection of Color,” a speculative research platform where color is examined not simply as a visual attribute, but as a sort of technological artifact and historical archive. Rather than approaching color as a neutral aesthetic element, the project treats it as a site where industrial production, scientific knowledge, cultural symbolism and political histories converge. Within this framework, every pigment, luminous surface or digital color value carries traces of the systems that produced it.
Juan Bastardo is a transnational artist who was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, and is based between Mexico and California. He combines sculpture, art installations and video along with manual and digital processes to question and reflect upon artifacts and their ability to modify and reinvent the individual, as well as their public, historical and contemporary dimensions. He holds a MFA from the University of California in San Diego, a BFA in visual arts from the University of Guadalajara and a BA in design from the Bribiesca Art Institute in Mexico. His work has been exhibited in places such as The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art in Riverside, The San Diego Art Institute (now ICA San Diego), The Armory Center for The Arts in Pasadena, The Robert and Frances Fullerton Museum of Art in San Bernardino, The Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, Torrance Art Museum in Torrance, Vincent Price Museum in Los Angeles, Calif. and CECUT in Tijuana, Baja California, Museo de las Artes, Museo de la Ciudad and Museo Raúl Anguiano in Guadalajara, Mexico.
Dinghy Rig is a collaborative, artist-run art production and exhibition program launched by Aitor Lajarin-Encina and Marius Lehene. Kim Garcia and Ajean Lee Ryan’s Past Continuous show is the second installment of a long-term collaboration with the Museum of Art Fort Collins, which will host the Dinghy Rig shows in what used to be the building’s safety vault room. The project benefits from the generous support of Dr. Peter D. Springberg.
