The Aspen Skiing Co. and Aspen Art Museum began a partnership in 2005 called Art in Unexpected Places. The collaboration reaches people who wouldn't normally engage with art, and ensures that Aspen also remains a thriving art community. Anyone who has a season pass or lift ticket will recognize the featured works on them as part of this campaign. 

This winter, art is also popping up at altitude. Inside Snowmass' Elk Camp Restaurant, Shinique Smith created a site-specific mural spanning 30 feet inside the main dining room. It opened with the season in November and will come down before next winter, but in the meantime guests can enjoy the kaleidoscope of color, calligraphy and collage. Part graffiti, part color explosion, the mural is meant to draw in the audience and keep them engaged. 

Smith usually works out of her studio, but public art is not a departure for her. In 2014, Americans for the Arts named Smith's "Seven Moon Junction," in Boston's Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, among the year's best public art projects. She spent part of the fall creating this work in Snowmass, using everything from the Aspen Art Museum's painting supplies to T-shirt scraps. 

Though we can't all commission pieces for our own interior design purposes, it's a good reminder that art is a key centerpiece to any room -- and it serves a good conversation-starter.