By Ray Mark Rinaldi, Special to The Denver Post

University Art Museums tend to be peculiar attractions, with collections built not through the careful choices of curators, but with the random gifts of donors.

A college never knows what will get dropped off on the doorstep by a grateful alum or a retiring professor, but the right donation — if it’s large and important enough — can reshape the entire collection and remake the institution’s profile.

That, in a sense, has been the effect of the Hartford-Tandstad Collection, which arrived in 2011 at the Gregory Allicar Museum of Art at Colorado State University. The collection, which was built by Fort Collins residents Torleif Tandstad and Larry Hartford, expanded the museum’s holdings in entirely new directions and inspired a $3.3 million expansion, which opened last month….. READ ALL