{"id":21729,"date":"2025-06-23T17:41:40","date_gmt":"2025-06-23T23:41:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/after-trump-gripe-presidential-portraits-at-colorado-capitol-may-be-replaced-with-governors\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:09:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:09:07","slug":"after-trump-gripe-presidential-portraits-at-colorado-capitol-may-be-replaced-with-governors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/after-trump-gripe-presidential-portraits-at-colorado-capitol-may-be-replaced-with-governors\/","title":{"rendered":"After Trump gripe, presidential portraits at Colorado Capitol may be replaced with governors"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Two
Two people admire the blank space on the wall in the presidential portrait gallery in the Colorado Capitol on March 25 where the painting of President Donald Trump once hung. (Jesse Paul\/The Colorado Sun file)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The committee overseeing historic preservation at the Colorado Capitol is mulling whether to replace the presidential portraits hanging in the building\u2019s third-floor rotunda with paintings of the state\u2019s former governors.<\/p>\n

The idea was floated at the panel\u2019s meeting last month in response to the controversy earlier this year that followed President Donald Trump\u2019s complaints about how he looked in his Colorado Capitol portrait. Trump called the portrait \u201ctruly the worst.\u201d<\/p>\n

The painting was removed in response and there\u2019s currently an awkward blank space in the rotunda above a placard marking Trump\u2019s White House terms.<\/p>\n

Dawn DiPrince, president and CEO of History Colorado, told fellow members of the Capitol Building Advisory Committee that the controversy presents an opportunity as Colorado prepares to celebrate the sesquicentennial anniversary of its statehood next year.<\/p>\n

\u201cCapitols for a state should really be a celebration of the state,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel like Colorado\u2019s 150th birthday is a really wonderful time to do that. It does not make sense to me to take up such a significant amount of space in our state\u2019s Capitol when we don\u2019t even have space to hang all of our governors\u2019 portraits.\u201d<\/p>\n

Right now, a limited number of gubernatorial portraits are displayed on rotation on the first floor of the Capitol.<\/p>\n

\"President
President Donald Trump's portrait hangs in the Colorado Capitol after an unveiling ceremony, Aug. 1, 2019, in Denver. (Thomas Peipert\/Associated Press file)<\/span>dur-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The Colorado Capitol has a portrait of every president. Most state capitols do not.<\/p>\n

The conversation around replacing the presidential portraits with gubernatorial ones began before the Trump controversy, which became a worldwide news story. But the Trump drama kicked it into high gear.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that the White House asked that the current portrait of the current president be removed gave us an opportunity to think about all of this and how we want this space to be used,\u201d said former state Sen. Lois Court, chair of the Capitol Building Advisory Committee. \u201cIt is, in fact, our state Capitol. It is our space.\u201d<\/p>\n

History Colorado has portraits of all but four of the state\u2019s governors. The missing portraits include one of Gov. Jared Polis. But DiPrince said that could be addressed with photographs of those governors.<\/p>\n

Another issue is that the gubernatorial portraits are not uniform in size. The presidential portraits are. Displaying the paintings of the former governor on the curved walls in the third floor of the rotunda would require some planning.<\/p>\n

Finally, Colorado\u2019s former governors aren\u2019t quite as well known as the nation\u2019s former presidents. That presents a problem.<\/p>\n

\"As
As viewed through a fisheye lens, the rotunda where portraits of presidents are displayed except for Donald Trump is shown after the picture was removed from the wall of the rotunda in the State Capitol following complaints about the likeness from Trump on March 25 in Denver. (David Zalubowski\/Associated Press file)<\/span>dur-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cSomeone would have to develop the interpretation to go along with the governors\u2019 portraits so that those things could be explained and made important to the children and other people who are looking at them,\u201d said Georgi Contiguglia, former president and CEO of History Colorado, who also sits on the Capitol Building Advisory Committee.<\/p>\n

Not everyone on the Capitol Building Advisory Committee is keen on swapping out the governors for the presidents. Some called it a \u201cknee-jerk reaction\u201d to the Trump saga.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat seems to be a very poor reason to open that discussion,\u201d said Kurt Morrison, deputy Colorado attorney general.<\/p>\n

State Rep. William Lindstedt, D-Broomfield, said the Trump situation is probably a one-off.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this particular scenario is unlikely to occur again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The
The plaque that marked the placement of a portrait of President Donald Trump is all that remains after the picture, which was part of a display of all of the country's chief executives, was removed from the wall of the rotunda in the State Capitol following complaints about the likeness from Trump on March 25 in Denver. (David Zalubowski\/Associated Press file)<\/span>dur-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The committee is also considering whether to accept a donated portrait of Trump to replace the one the president didn\u2019t like. That offer has apparently been made to state leaders<\/p>\n

The original portrait was paid for by donors after Republicans launched a fundraising campaign. It was painted by Sarah Boardman, who said Trump\u2019s complaints upended her career. She said the situation \u201cdirectly and negatively impacting my business of over 41 years,<\/a> which now is in danger of not recovering.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Capitol Building Advisory Committee put off a decision on the portraits to a later date.<\/p>\n

The Colorado Sun is a reader-supported, nonpartisan news organization dedicated to covering Colorado issues. To learn more, go to coloradosun.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Conversations were underway before controversy, but drama kicked talks into high gear<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21730,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[394,233,1137,28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-21729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado-legislature","tag-coloradosun-com","tag-donald-trump","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21729"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77435,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21729\/revisions\/77435"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21729"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=21729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}