There is no better tour guide for the Madden Museum of Art in Greenwood Village than co-founder, John Madden.
The real estate developer and his late wife, Marjorie, pieced together the extensive collection themselves, buying sculptures and paintings during international travels and developing relationships with artists like Chen Chi and Daniel Sprick. And Madden can share stories about nearly every piece in his gallery.
A long, 15th-century hardwood table Madden spotted in an alley in Florence, Italy. “The Victor,” a painting of a wounded, bellowing bull by Geza Vastagh that hangs above the reception desk was purchased from a gallery in London after the Maddens saw a crowd staring at it through a gallery window. Madden said it reminded him of his father who worked in the stock yards in Omaha when he was a kid.
Madden’s passion for collecting art is likely rivaled only by his desire to share it, which has helped shape the face of Greenwood Village and the south metro area with many art-centric projects, including the free, public Madden Museum on the ground floor of the Palazzo Verdi building, 6363 S. Fiddler’s Green Circle, which opened in 2008.
“This collection was put together over 40 years,” Madden said. “It was done to amass a collection people would enjoy.”
Madden and his John Madden Company first came to Greenwood Village in 1970. He developed hundred of acres in the city that would become Greenwood Plaza, a commercial center dotted with sculptures that Madden brought to the village and landscape architecture. Art-centric projects he built there included Harlequin Plaza and Fidddler’s Green Amphitheater.
“John has had a true artist’s eye in all he has done, from building to the preservation of art,” Greenwood Village Mayor Ron Rakowsky said. “His mark on Greenwood Village will live for at least another century.”
Over the lifetime of the still-family owned Madden Company, it has built more than 10 million square feet of commercial space across the country, much of it identifiable for its incorporation of art. The atrium of the Palazzo Verdi is home to a hand-carved replica of the labyrinth from the Chartres Cathedral in France. It sits below a 40-foot chandelier that includes pieces of crystal from Napoleonic Europe, Madden says.
“I’ve always tried to start a building around a piece of art, and that’s no kidding,” he said.
In 1981, Madden and his wife co-founded the Museum of Outdoor Art with their daughter, Cynthia Madden Leitner. The nonprofit, which now owns Fiddler’s Green, is based in Englewood and has helped spread public art in that city and many other places. Its mission is to “make art a part of everyday life,” which was always the case growing up in the Madden household, Madden Leitner recalled.
“I thought everybody knew about Michelangelo,” Madden Leitner joked of her childhood. “My mom, being a painter, was very creative, as was dad. He was creating environments and building buildings. The Madden Collection is a legacy, but so are his buildings and the parks and projects he initiated.”
This year, Madden donated 120 pieces from the Madden Collection to the University of Denver, where they will be used for education and in public showings. The donation has been valued at $10 million.
It does leave out some select pieces hanging in the Madden Museum, most notably “Boy in Grass,” a 1968 painting of a young boy lying down among tall grass. The artist: Marjorie Madden.
“From my standpoint there really isn’t any relationship between money and what art is worth,” Madden said recently, motioning to “Boy in Grass.” “I got that painting from my wife for nothing.”