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How Aspen Became the Art World’s Most Exclusive Summer Camp

Once a community of a few hundred miners and farmers, it has become not only a luxurious ski destination but also an arts hub fueled by billionaires, blue-chip collectors and some of the country’s most innovative cultural institutions.

Aspen is one of those American real estate miracles: once a community of a few hundred miners and farmers, it grew within a century into a city of 8,000 residents, many of whom are millionaires or billionaires. And since art follows money, it also became a premier destination on the international art circuit. But let’s back up. Aspen was, in 1879, a silver-mining camp, established on land from which the Ute people were forcibly displaced. After the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act in 1893, the silver economy was devastated and the population collapsed. By the mid-1940s, Aspen was a fading Victorian mining town of roughly 700 residents, sustained largely by ranching, farming and the remnants of the silver industry.

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That was how Chicago industrialist Walter Paepcke found it when he arrived after the end of World War II. His wife, Elizabeth, had visited Aspen before him and encouraged him to consider the potential of the struggling former mining town. Together, they understood that, between the beauty of its mountains and its surviving Victorian buildings, the city could become not only a luxurious ski resort but also a cultural destination.

In fact, what they envisioned from the beginning with their “Aspen Idea” was an entire ecosystem in which physical recreation, culture and intellectual life could coexist. While Paepcke was involved in the Aspen Skiing Company, which created the infrastructure that transformed the mountain town into a skiing destination, he didn’t want winter sports to become Aspen’s only draw. He helped establish the town’s first cultural institutions, such as the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies (now the Aspen Institute), and organized major cultural events that drew prominent international figures to the city. The most famous was the 20-day celebration of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s 200th birthday in 1949, which brought more than 2,000 visitors to Aspen, including Albert Schweitzer, José Ortega y Gasset, Thornton Wilder and Arthur Rubinstein, proof positive that an isolated Colorado town could function as an international cultural gathering place.

With a forward-thinking, culture-led development strategy well ahead of its time, Paepcke understood that intellectual prestige could generate economic value. He was the one who recruited and supported Herbert Bayer, with whom he had already worked through the Container Corporation of America. A Bauhaus émigré and brilliant polymath, Bayer translated Paepcke’s broad humanist ambitions into architecture and urban planning, as well as the posters, typography and graphics that shaped Aspen’s emerging institutional and symbolic identity. He also helped rehabilitate existing buildings, including the Hotel Jerome and, in part, the Wheeler Opera House, preserving the historic character of the former mining town while introducing modern interventions and a distinctly European sensibility that continues to contribute to Aspen’s charm.

The Resnick Center for Herbert Bayer Studies opened in 2022 on the Aspen Institute’s Aspen Meadows campus to preserve and study the legacy of the pioneering Bauhaus artist and designer. A true gem, the center presents unexpectedly visionary works through rotating exhibitions that both illuminate Bayer’s fundamental role in shaping Aspen’s modern chapter and testify to the depth of the city’s cultural life.

Today, 80 known billionaires hold property interests in Pitkin County, according to data gathered by Aspen Journalism and Aspen Sojourner. Downtown Aspen, where both the Aspen Art Fair and Intersect Aspen take place, is home to one of the most expensive real estate markets in the United States, with median home prices now in the stratosphere. (In 2025, the median sale price for a single-family home in Aspen reached approximately $17.5 million, up 31 percent year over year, while total residential sales volume reached roughly $2.51 billion.) During fair week, hotel rooms rarely start below $1,500 a night, making Aspen a natural playground for a rarefied crowd that knows it will, for the most part, encounter only peers there.

As part of the art week celebrations, Observer attended an after-party hosted by the private aviation company Falcon at a recently completed property listed for $62.5 million with Sotheby’s International Realty. “There are very few properties like this, overlooking the valley with this much land and isolation, and complete with everything one could desire, including a pool deck and outdoor fireplaces,” Chris Klug, a partner at Sotheby’s International Realty, told us. He........

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