They'll come for the chandelier, but I hope they'll stay for the art.

The chandelier is the new Dale Chihuly glass sculpture, installed recently in the lobby of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center.

Endowed by an anonymous patron (at an undisclosed cost), this piece is a gleaming bauble, all tendrils and fluted globes in blue, green and gold.

To be honest, it has nothing to do with the aesthetics and architecture of the center, which three years ago dodged the terrible proposal to put an addition on the front of the 1936 building designed by John Gaw Meem. But the Chihuly work is beautiful, puzzling in its complexity, yet easy to admire for its flamboyance and its art-star creator.

The weekend after the Chihuly was installed, people streamed into the center; they photographed the chandelier, they exclaimed over it. I wanted to guide them into the Garden Gallery, in effect the entry to the center's spaces devoted to art.

Once one of the more gloomy art venues in the region, the Garden Gallery has been opened up, its windows freed. On view, from the center's permanent collection, are four paintings that set the tone of place: Frank Mechau's 1935 The Pony Express and The Dangers of the Mail, the massive 1989 Wilson Hurley landscape Taos Autumn, and Chuck Forsman's 1993 comment on man's intrusion into nature, Native Land.

Ahead, though, lies the prize: "Emerson Woelffer: Life in the Abstract," a labor-of-love exhibition designed to showcase work by the innovative painter who ran the center's School of Art during the 1950s. As a corollary, there is "Art for Art's Sake," a selection of abstract work from the collection of the Taylor Museum.

"Life in the Abstract" includes about 30 pieces that trace Woelffer's time in the Springs, his stay on the island of Ischia, and his move to Los Angeles in the late 1950s to teach at the Chouinard Art Institute. From the bold sprinkling of symbols of The Red 'A' and Seven x Four to the strong composition The Hatch - and later collages made in honor of various artists and poets - Woelffer showed the tenacity to do it his way.

His legacy is the lush application of paint and fierce line- and mark-making, the torch he carried for abstract expressionism, and his ability to attract artists such as Robert Motherwell to teach in the Springs. Woelffer was at the fine arts center's school from 1950 to 1957, hired by one-time director James B. Byrnes.

But then Woelffer moved, finding fame in California. After his death in 2003, several exhibitions of his work emerged there - including one organized by artist (and Woelffer student) Ed Ruscha.

The center exhibition was the idea of Hunter Frost, former director of the department of the performing arts at Fountain Valley School and a friend of Woelffer's. Frost proposed the project to former center director David Turner before he left, served as guest curator and contributed an essay to the show's catalog. (Also involved in securing loans from museums and private collections were Byrnes and assistant curator Judy Burdick.)

Much is made in the exhibition's documentation of Woelffer's avant garde tastes, his contacts, his love of great cars and his attempt to find like-minded people in the Springs. But the work is what is important, and Frost and Burdick have given the state a gift in re-introducing Woelffer to the conversation about art.

The same can be said about "Art for Art's Sake," which includes a choice selection of abstract works from the center's Taylor Museum collection. Burdick chose artists who made their reputations in Colorado, as well as elsewhere.

So here are Motherwell (the lithograph Summer Light Series #3: Harvest in Scotland and an Elegy fragment); Kay Sage (the 1937 painting Afterward); and Richard Diebenkorn, whose powerful painting Urbana #4 almost devours the gallery.

But here also are Ken Goehring (the dramatic 1958 Landscape #1); Mary Chenoweth (the deftly assembled 1960 collage Peace #5); and Dave Yust (the intricate 1982 Skew Edges Inclusion (Warm) ).

When center director Michael de Marsche arrived last year, he said, "We want to do things with what we have now." Expansion plans were replaced by interior changes and consideration of the collection.

Perhaps this is a work in progress - there's an awful lot of butterscotch-colored paint slathered inside. But seeing treasures pulled out of the basement and given new life makes up for that.

A DIFFERENT PRIDE OF PLACE: New on the shelves is A Passion to Preserve, a book that takes an unusual tack in terms of exploring the preservation movement in this country and that is timely as Denver moves into its 2004 PrideFest event Sunday.

The book's subtitle - Gay Men as Keepers of Culture - places this in the growing body of writings about the role of the gay community in saving and restoring historic buildings and neighborhoods - from great old Victorians to mid-century modern treasures.

Written by Milwaukee resident Will Fellows, Passion to Preserve (University of Wisconsin Press, $30) opens with essays about the role of keeping culture alive, the methodology Fellows used to find contributors, and the theories he developed from responses received from different regions of the United States. The second half is short essays by these contributors, who include writer Allan Gurganus, Preservation magazine columnist Dwight Young and, from Denver, Grammar of Ornament founder Ken Miller.