Ed Ruscha Joins Aspen One’s Art in Unexpected Places for 2025–26 Season

Source: Aspen One

Reported By: Matthew Kennedy

For over two decades, Aspen Snowmass has elevated the experience of skiing with its Art in Unexpected Places initiative—an inspired program that turns everyday ephemera, like lift tickets and ski passes, into small-format canvases for contemporary art. For the 2025–26 winter season, Aspen One has announced a landmark collaboration: Ed Ruscha, one of the most influential voices in American contemporary art, will be the featured artist for this year’s collection.

Known for his innovative use of language and iconography, Ruscha brings a legacy of intellectual curiosity and West Coast cool to a town already steeped in cultural influence. His works—permanently housed in institutions like MoMA, The Whitney, Tate Modern, and Centre Pompidou—have long explored the intersection of word, image, and landscape. His inclusion in ArtUP marks both a continuation and an evolution of Aspen One’s commitment to artistic excellence.

At its core, the ArtUP program is a gesture toward making art more democratic, embedded in the flow of daily life. Ruscha’s contribution speaks to this spirit. His art—often infused with wry humor, conceptual wit, and quiet provocation—has long drawn from the landscapes of America. Here, the setting shifts to Colorado’s high country, where Ruscha’s works will accompany skiers and riders across the peaks of Aspen Snowmass.

Ruscha’s career has been defined by a refusal to be confined to a single medium. Early in his journey, he described himself as “an abstract artist… who deals with subject matter,” and over the decades, he has explored everything from photography and printmaking to painting and installations. His work frequently oscillates between the literal and the symbolic, drawing out unexpected meaning from both signage and scenery.

By integrating his art into the tactile rituals of ski culture—sliding a pass into a jacket pocket, scanning it at a gondola gate—Aspen One continues to blur the lines between art viewing and lived experience. The lift ticket becomes not only a functional object but also a conversation starter, a keepsake, a pocket-sized provocation.

The ArtUP program is a reflection of Aspen’s longstanding identity as a cultural and intellectual hub. Rooted in the Aspen Idea—which champions the integration of mind, body, and spirit—the program leverages the ski resort experience to further Aspen One’s mission of making contemporary art more accessible, spontaneous, and embedded in place.

In addition to lift tickets, the program features on-mountain art installations, artwork placed throughout the resort, and a series of archival books documenting its evolution. Ruscha’s participation adds a new dimension to this growing archive, anchoring the upcoming season in conceptual depth and historical relevance.