Thoughts from Gary Steuer on the passing of Brian Vogt of the Denver Botanic Gardens

Bonfils-Stanton Foundation joins with the rest of the community in mourning the passing of Brian Vogt, the extraordinary leader of the Denver Botanic Gardens.

Brian’s accomplishments are many and have been well-documented in the many tributes – the dizzying array of major capital projects at the Garden, conceived and executed under his leadership, significantly expanding the Garden’s capacity to better serve the community; elevating the incorporation of sculpture and visual art into the Garden’s programming, including the Chihuly exhibition that included the legacy of the beautiful permanent Chihuly piece. The list goes on and on.

But I would like to focus on Brian, the human being and leader. He was deeply thoughtful and caring. He believed in leading by hiring the best people and then trusting and supporting them to excel. He would say he did not need to be a botany (or arts) expert to lead the Garden, he just needed to trust and empower the superb people on his team.

He was also deeply committed to equity, to ensuring the Garden was welcoming and accessible to all people in Denver. I remember when Jandel Allen Davis was Board chair, and she, Brian and I met over lunch to discuss how the Garden could do better, and it was so clear that Brian was as committed to this goal as Jandel, that he saw this as something that should be a paramount objective for all cultural institutions, not just the Garden. And considering the current politicization of “DEI” I think it is important to add that Brian’s commitment was about being welcoming and fair to all people, which is about being humane and caring, not “woke.”

In talking to me about his vision for the Garden, he shared about how wonderful it was to walk through the Garden on SCFD Free Days, when the Garden visitors “looked like Denver” – big crowds, all backgrounds, all ages – and his ambition for the Garden visitors to come close to that vision EVERY day, not just a few days a year. It was therefore fitting that this vision for the Garden turned into a vision for the City’s entire cultural sector that we at Bonfils-Stanton Foundation have helped foster and support, and that included several years ago bringing in Donna Walker-Kuhne, a consultant who works on building more representative audiences and visitors in the arts, to prepare a report on how to build more diverse arts audiences in Denver. Donna spent many years as Director of Marketing for The Public Theatre in New York City, under the leadership of George C. Wolfe. When Donna started her job George took her into the theatre during a show to look at the audience and told her that her job description was to make sure that audiences in the theatre would look like a New York City subway car, filled with the beauty and diversity of the City. Brian had that same vision for the Garden.

The Foundation also has been an investor in Brian’s vision, directly and indirectly, from the early support of the May Bonfils-Stanton Rose Garden, to supporting a Community Supported Art (CSA) project, to sponsoring the lecture series for many years, to supporting capital projects like the Welcome Center and one of the art galleries in the Freyer-Newman building. We also support Swallow Hill Music that partners with the Garden to present the summer concert series. And in recent years, as we redirected our funding away from larger institutions, Brian was totally supportive of this shift, and we would still meet periodically for lunch at Zorba’s just to talk, even if the Foundation was no longer a likely funding prospect. It was not about the money– it was about caring for this entire community.

And on a truly personal note, my daughter – now 13 – has virtually grown up at the Garden, splashing in the stream in the Children’s Garden when she was a toddler, on those hot summer days, having her third birthday party there with a “fairy garden” theme, going to summer camp, enjoying concerts, marveling at the holiday lights, taking in the intoxicating aroma of the lilacs. And now we live literally next to the Garden, and it is a virtual backyard for our family.

So, Brian, you will always be in our hearts, and thanks to all your accomplishments at the Garden and beyond, your presence will be felt for generations to come, and that is a kind of immortality.