The Museum of Outdoor Arts provides an oasis in Greenwood Village
By Kastle Waserman
If you’ve ever wanted to step into a fairy tale, you can’t get much closer than the wonderland at Marjorie Park. With large brass sculptures of Alice in Wonderland characters to its latest exhibit, “The Cabinet of Curiosities,” you can release your inner child in the beauty of this tranquil oasis in the heart of Greenwood Village.
Surrounded by office buildings and part of the Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre campus, the Museum of Outdoor Arts (MOA) made its home in the park starting in the early 1980s when commercial developer founder, John W. Madden Jr. donated the property to the museum. It was established as a non-profit arts organization in 1981. The park was originally known as Samson Park, named after John and his wife Marjorie’s Yorkshire Terrier. Marjorie Madden passed away in 2014 and in 2015 the park was rededicated as “Marjorie Park” in her honor. John passed in January of 2024 at the age of 94. His daughter Cynthia Madden Leitner remains MOA’s president and executive director.
On a beautiful Colorado day, the park gleams with green grass, flowers, and whimsical statues and sculptures among the surrounding glass and concrete office buildings. The director of programs, Tim Vacca, says people often come to the park to walk and picnic on their lunch breaks, taking pleasure in the preserved green space.
The park and sculpture garden are open to the public and often used as a VIP area during shows at Fiddler’s Green. The amphitheater itself is filled with large murals depicting Colorado wildlife and living plant walls created by local artists chosen from a call for entries. Selections are juried. A committee also scouts and invites artists during research and travel to create pieces for the museum.
MOA hosts many special events in the park, including, “Uncorked,” featuring live music, food and drink, “Candlelight Concerts,” “Rock the Block” lunchtime concerts and Scientific and Cultural Facilities District free days. Fall programming features comedy nights and Halloween-themed movie nights.
“Our mission is to make art a part of everyday life,” says Vacca. “When you have art in accessible areas, it adds to the pleasure of being where you are.”
Access to the park is determined by events and the Fiddler’s Green calendar. It’s best to make an appointment. For the “Cabinet of Curiosities,” requests must be made for a tour as its entrance is into an immersive space, a literal giant vintage-style cabinet located on the park grounds curated by Lonnie Hanzon, a beloved Colorado artist known for his immersive productions such as “Camp Christmas.”
Hanzon’s 20-year history of working with MOA began through a friend who recommended him to Cynthia Madden Leitner for a mosaic wedding altar project. Hanzon ended up managing light shows and displays for two decades, eventually becoming the organization’s “wizard in residence.” He’s taken breaks from the museum to work with his team creating immersive experiences around the world, but he says he’s happy to be in Colorado—his home and favorite place.
While Hanzon admits he gets a lot of the credit, it took a team of artisans working more than a year to put together the “Cabinet of Curiosities,” which invites visitors to imagine what it might be like to step into a cabinet filled with references to fairy tales and nursery rhymes meant to be experienced as if getting to know the storybook characters themselves.
Hanzon explained that much of his love of fairy tale relics stems from a fascination with reliquaries (containers used to hold sacred relics), filled with objects of symbolic or religious significance such as clothing, body parts or ashes. “What happens if you have Little Red Riding Hood’s cape? Is it charged with that story, that magic?” he asks.
The Cabinet is filled with reliquaries containing everything from the Little Match Girl’s burned clothes to the Queen of Hearts’ red fruit tart. Other objects among the collection of cabinets include antique magic lanterns and colorful slides in musical pullout drawers and hanging from chandeliers, Rapunzel’s long braid crawling along the wall, Jack and Jill’s pail spilling sparkling tinsel streamers, and a wave of a hand lights up a glittering rabbit hole down a frame of books.
An earlier, smaller version of the Cabinet was done in 2009 before it moved to become a permanent installation at Marjorie Park and launched with brief run of an interactive theatrical play in partnership with The Catamounts in Boulder in May.
While Hanzon describes his work as somewhere in the “in-between” museum and theater, he says he’s finally accepted the title of “artist.” But mostly he considers himself a “keeper” of objects and art forms that are beautiful but perhaps forgotten by current society.
Though he admits his collection spans vast warehouses of chaos, Hanzon says what he does isn’t meant to be kept and chronicled like a museum, which he takes issue with.“Less than ten percent of the world’s beauty and treasures aren’t seen by anyone because they’re neatly cataloged in basements. For me, I can either put my energy into cataloging or into making the magic. I want to keep these things alive to be rediscovered by the next generation.”
Museum of Outdoor Arts
6331 S. Fiddlers Green Circle
Greenwood Village
303.806.0444
moaonline.org
