{"id":411364,"date":"2026-01-16T18:28:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T18:28:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/411364\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T18:28:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T18:28:14","slug":"how-a-condemned-cookie-factory-in-denver-became-home-to-a-heavy-hitting-art-collection-and-yes-you-can-visit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/411364\/","title":{"rendered":"How a Condemned Cookie Factory in Denver Became Home to a Heavy-Hitting Art Collection (And Yes, You Can Visit)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\"AmandaAmanda Precourt and her partner, Andrew Jensdotter, at home in Denver with Anselm Kiefer\u2019s Engel der Geschichte, 2017.<\/p>\n

Amanda Precourt spent the last nine years collecting contemporary art<\/a> at a furious pace\u2014while building a home tailored to showcase the trove. \u201cI would find a piece then design a room around it, using art as an active participant in the conversation,\u201d says the 52-year-old philanthropist as she tours me around her recently completed 8,000-square-foot residence.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The exterior conditions of Precourt\u2019s new digs are as singular as what\u2019s contained inside: The home is perched atop a former fortune cookie factory in Denver\u2019s Baker neighborhood, which the real estate developer, who launched her own firm, AJP Realty and Design, in 2009, repurposed into a non-commercial art space that opened to the public last May.<\/p>\n

Precourt first came across the condemned factory in 2016, shortly after she began collecting, and immediately imagined building a home on its roof. It was an ambitious plan: The ceiling was caving in, and paper fortune slips floated in puddles of standing water inside. \u201cAs a developer, this was certainly the most complex project I\u2019ve ever done but [also] the most rewarding,\u201d says Precourt, who salvaged the original brick walls and wood-beamed ceiling from the 1941 structure to frame what she dubbed Cookie Factory<\/a>\u20145,700 square feet of public gallery space that is entirely self-funded and free to access.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"TheEl Anatsui, TKT,\u00a02014.<\/p>\n

Inside, Precourt\u2014along with her partner, Andrew Jensdotter, who serves as director of exhibitions, and curator J\u00e9r\u00f4me Sans, who has assumed the role of artistic director\u2014invites artists to make site-specific work inspired by Colorado. Twenty-five hundred people attended the opening of Cookie Factory\u2019s inaugural exhibition with Sam Falls<\/a> last year. The art space\u2019s second exhibition, featuring works by Gary Simmons<\/a>, is on view through May 9.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to create an art-forward life and share it with the community,\u201d says Precourt, an outspoken mental health advocate who is open about her experiences with attempted suicide and recovery. \u201cI got a second chance at life, and I need to give back. It\u2019s my karmic duty.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The piece that sparked Precourt\u2019s collecting trajectory was Jeffrey Gibson<\/a>\u2019s Know Your Magic, Baby, 2016, a beaded punching bag that she encountered at New York\u2019s Marc Straus Gallery that same year. Precourt worked with her close friend Kim Gould, the art advisor who died unexpectedly in 2023, to acquire it. Today, Gibson\u2019s sculpture hangs in Precourt\u2019s home framed by a floor-to-ceiling window, a beacon drawing the attention of passersby.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"TheLeft to right: Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Love Hurts), 2012; Jeffrey Gibson, Save Me, 2018.<\/p>\n

These days, the stories that accompany the works in the couple\u2019s collection fill the house as much as the works themselves: In the entertainment room, a Rashid Johnson<\/a> mixed-media Untitled Escape Collage, 2019, blankets an entire wall. Precourt bonded with the artist over their shared experiences with recovery. In an interior courtyard, an otherworldly totemic figure in a little pink dress by Huma Bhabha<\/a> stands like a sentinel, presiding over Precourt while she reads or practices yoga. \u201cWe predicted it would scare the daylight out of my mother\u2014and it did,\u201d Jensdotter recalls. <\/p>\n

Covering an entire wall of the living room is Anselm Kiefer<\/a>\u2019s Engel der Geschichte, a monumental mixed-media painting completed and acquired in 2017. It weighs nearly 2,700 pounds and stretches 21 feet. \u201cThe whole building was engineered to support [it],\u201d Precourt says. Jensdotter, an artist who counts the German painter among his influences, describes how Kiefer sprayed this densely layered landscape piece with molten lead, causing the surface of the canvas to peel and curl and creating two wing-shaped forms that suggest a phoenix rising from the ashes. \u201cI\u2019ve been through some tough times,\u201d adds Precourt, \u201cand that idea of resurrection and resilience really spoke to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"LeftLeft to right: Lauren Halsey, Untitled, 2021; Sterling Ruby, TURBINE. GABAPENTIN, 2022; Otani Workshop, Standing rabbit, 2022.<\/p>\n

By this point, the couple has amassed more than 140 works by artists including Lauren Halsey<\/a>, Sterling Ruby<\/a>, Mary Weatherford<\/a>, Fred Eversley<\/a>, Barbara Kruger<\/a>, and El Anatsui<\/a>. \u201cI look at our collection, and there\u2019s a lot of discussion about otherness, pain, struggle\u2014and also reconciliation, hope. We\u2019re not looking at values and buying based on [the] market,\u201d Precourt concludes. \u201cEvery piece, I feel it in my gut.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"RashidRashid Johnson, Untitled Escape Collage, 2019.
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