Year in Review: Arts and Entertainment

2024 was a big year in Aspen’s ever-expanding arts, entertainment, and culture offerings:

Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey celebrated its 20th anniversary by officially opening Stranahan’s Whiskey Lodge at 307 South Mill Street, in the space that formerly housed Aspen Pie Shop. The Lodge marks Stranahan’s return to Aspen.

The story goes that, over 20 years ago, a barn fire brought together two locals: Jess Graber, a volunteer firefighter, and George Stranahan, the founder of Woody Creek Tavern, longtime brewery owner, and whiskey connoisseur. This encounter and ensuing friendship would develop into the creation of one of the nation’s first single malt whiskeys.

The Aspen Lodge aims to celebrate those roots while ushering in a new era as the American Single Malt category waits for official whiskey designation.

“We’re coming back to Aspen, where I began the American Single Malt journey two decades ago. Opening the doors to our Stranahan’s Whiskey Lodge is a thank you to our friends, family, and fans who helped us get here, but it is also a long-awaited return home,” said Graber in a prepared statement. 

—Sarah Girgis

When photographer Marcia Haritgan first came to Aspen in 1982, the family-owned and operated Mountain Chalet had already been a community staple for almost 30 years. She found a community there of fellow skiers and friends but was most taken by founders and proprietors Marian and Ralph Melville after meeting them in 1988.

“Marian and Ralph loved history. I said to them, probably in the mid-’90s, ‘I just love everything you have done; we need to make an album for the lobby for the guests to enjoy some of the history,’” Hartigan said. “And so I did that by going through old photos in their attic, and we even sent letters to guests saying, ‘If you have pictures, send them to me.’ That one album turned into seven.”

Making albums and books about the Mountain Chalet is something that became a passion and a habit for her. “The Mountain Chalet: The Story of the Mountain Chalet, as told by Ralph Melville,” is her latest homage to a place that has become like a home away from home for many return guests since it opened in 1954.

—Sarah Girgis

The Bayer Center’s third exhibition, “Bauhaus Typography at 100,” which opened on June 11 and will run until April 25, 2025, explores and celebrates the school’s legacy in graphic design and typography.

A collaboration with San Francisco-based Letterform Archive, the exhibition features work by Johannes Itten, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, László Moholy-Nagy, Joost Schmidt, and Herbert Bayer along with others whose innovative typographic contributions are often overlooked, including women such as Friedl Dicker.

Letterform Archive first exhibited “Bauhaus Typography at 100,” in 2019 in honor of the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus and published a corresponding book. The exhibition is structured in a way that each gallery represents a different chapter.

Bauhaus typography emphasized simplicity, functionality, and legibility and moved away from the ornate and decorative letterforms of the past. The movement’s key figures, such as Bayer, created new typographic layouts and fonts, including universal type. These fonts were sans-serif, which was considered more legible than serif fonts.

Though the school only lasted 14 years, it had a tremendous influence on what followed.

—Sarah Girgis

It’s been a decade since the Shigeru Ban-designed Aspen Art Museum (AAM) on the corner of South Spring Street and East Hyman Avenue opened its doors.

After an international search in 2007, the Aspen Art Museum’s Architect Selection Committee — spearheaded by Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson, former Aspen Art Museum CEO and director — unanimously chose Shigeru Ban Architects (SBA).

The building, however, became a controversial and contentious topic in the community.

“This was such a difficult project to start,” Ban said. “We designed two buildings — the first for the original site, but the community didn’t want to put a museum there. So we gave up the first site because the community didn’t agree. I had to redesign the building for the second (and current) site, but it was very small for what they wanted. So that’s why it was quite a difficult project.”

—Sarah Girgis

After 37 years, beloved Aspen eatery Mezzaluna closed its doors the first week of October to make way for a new concept, ZigZag, which opened in December.

“It was just time (for me) to play more and travel. Thirty-one years is a pretty long time to be doing anything,” owner Deryk Cave said. “It’s not getting easier with competition and … a lot of the old restaurants … closed and big money starting to come in and buy all the places.”

Cave bought Mezzaluna six years after its opening in 1993 from the original owner, Charif Souki, with his business partner at the time, Joe Cosniac. Souki was also an owner of the Mezzaluna restaurant in Los Angeles which became a hotspot for people following the O.J. Simpson case since both victims worked at the restaurant, and it was where Nicole Brown Simpson had her last meal.

In those days, celebrities from Hunter S. Thompson and Jimmy Buffett to Jack Nicholson, Bono, and even former President Bill Clinton were often spotted at 624 E. Cooper Ave.

Twenty years after Cave and Cosniac bought the restaurant, Cave bought out Cosniac’s portion of the restaurant, and Sutherland — who started as a busboy in 1990 and had been working as a manager since before the restaurant was sold — became Cave’s new partner.

—Sarah Girgis

Sarah Girgis is the Arts and Entertainment Editor for The Aspen Times. She can be reached at 970-429-9151 or sgirgis@aspentimes.com.