While Baryn
Futa is an excellent patron of the arts now, he really didn’t develop
such a deep appreciation for the arts until relatively recently. In fact, it
wasn’t until he retired and began to work with the venerable Denver Art Museum
that he truly began to understand and appreciate the importance of the arts,
and perhaps no one was more surprised than he at that development. He certainly
used his time at the DAM to cultivate his new love of art and art history by
attending art fairs and museum exhibitions and anything else he could find.
Baryn also attended numerous arts classes and started his own art collection,
which has grown to be very extensive and impressive over the years.
Currently, Baryn Futa holds memberships in many prominent
art museums with impressive collections of their own, including the Jewish
Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Guggenheim, among many others.
Whenever he can, Baryn also loans pieces from his own collection to museums
because he wants more people to appreciate the arts the way he does.
Not everyone who loves art is in a position to
support them to the extent needed. Of course, as is his personality, it seems
at times as if Baryn Futa is trying to take on as much of the responsibility
for art appreciation as he possibly can. While he sees the arts as a great
cause that benefits all of society, Baryn also understands art as a profitable
and useful investment. The art of the past puts us in touch with our ancestors
in a way that nothing else can, and we owe it to our descendants to preserve as
much of that as possible for the future. That makes art and art museums
extremely important.