ASPEN — Often a thing cannot be seen clearly from the inside. Distance, in time and space, is required to see the object, to see how it exists in its context. This can be especially true in the arts: A painter applies oil to canvas, then steps back, the better to observe what she has done. Ask any musician what they make of the CD they have just recorded and the response is uniform: “I have no idea,” they will say. “I’m too close to it, spent too much time listening to it. Check back with me in six months.

Jim Baker was as close to the Anderson Ranch Arts Center as anyone has been. Baker spent 20 years at the Snowmass Village arts institution: nine in the photography department, then 11 as executive director of the Ranch. Now, from a distance of two-plus years, and some 1,800 miles — he is now president of the Maine College of Art — his old haunt has come into sharper focus.

“To me, it was always seen as little ol’ Anderson Ranch out in Snowmass Village, the only one with the lights on most of the year. Someone would praise the Ranch, and you’d think they were just being nice,” said Baker by phone. “But the word about the Ranch is much more powerful outside the Roaring Fork Valley than in it. People out in the world will speak about how powerful an influence the Ranch is.”

Anderson Ranch is now getting played up in its home community more than it ever has. ARAC@AAM: Anderson Ranch Arts Center at the Aspen Art Museum, which opened last night at the Art Museum and runs through Dec. 7, is an ambitious survey of the people who have populated the Ranch over its 40-plus-year history. The exhibit features work, mostly of recent vintage, by 27 artists, all of whom have been visiting artists, residents or faculty at the Ranch. A call was put out to more than 600 artists; some 250 submitted work to be considered. The selection process was then put in the hands of three outside jurors: Dan Cameron of the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, Laura Hoptman of the New Museum in New York, and Lauri Firstenberg of LA><Art in Los Angeles.

The result of that process is not a boastful proclamation of the Ranch’s significance in the art world. Baker says it was clear that the jurors “were not doing something obvious like choosing the most recognizable names.” But he praises the exhibition for spotlighting the wide range of artists, and types of art. His successor at the Ranch, Hunter O’Hanian, agrees that, more than anything, ARAC@AAM demonstrates the diversity, in media and aesthetics, that marks Anderson Ranch.

“What we wanted to do was try to have work that represented the different disciplines at the Ranch. We wanted it to be across the board,” said O’Hanian, who goes under the title of president of the Ranch. “I think it does represent a very nice contemporary show of people associated with the Ranch. I’m thrilled about it.”

O’Hanian is particularly pleased with the contemporariness of the exhibit’s sensibility. Historically, Anderson Ranch has been primarily associated with the craft end of the art-making spectrum. Early on, its two signature programs were ceramics and wood-working; not coincidentally, two of the artists most closely associated with the Ranch have been Aspenite Paul Soldner, a pioneering ceramist who was a founder of the Ranch, and furniture-maker Sam Maloof.

The aesthetic has broadened and moved forward over the years; numerous cutting-edge artists have used the Ranch as something of an art-making retreat from urban bustle. But Baker points out that perception can lag behind reality, and that Anderson Ranch can still be seen as “that artsy-craftsy place in Snowmass Village.” It is an image that O’Hanian would like to correct, and he believes that collaborating with the Art Museum — whose aesthetic is more modern and conceptual — is a step towards that.

“I think what we do, the art we create here, because we’re all creating it, is all contemporary,” he said. “But what the exhibit does, it reminds people there is conceptual work as well as functional work. We have many different people, making very different kinds of work here. For any institution devoted to art-making, it would be a mistake to portray one particular field, if you do a variety of fields.”

The show may have been juried by outsiders, but the Art Museum has put its imprint on the exhibit. Nobody seeing ARAC@AAM would think of it as a “craft” show. Before viewers even get to the door, they are greeted by Liliana Mejía’s “Germinados,” a sound sculpture, installed in a tree, featuring the noise of dripping water. Displayed prominently at the entrance to the downstairs gallery is Squeak Carnwath’s “Manifestation,” a text-heavy piece that poses questions of how we observe things. Among the wall pieces are Harmony Hammond’s all-black oil painting “Sombrero”; Edie Tsong’s ballpoint pen drawings, which are not only fascinating exercises in technique but arresting images of family; and former Aspenite Cherie Hiser’s humorous and offbeat “Little Orphan Annie, (self portrait at the Hotel Jerome), a black-and-white photograph from 1968.

There are also several installations: Lucy Puls’ “Ad Hoc Locum (Two chairs),” featuring two dated chairs and images of stop signs; and Christine Lee’s “Shims: Thousands of Uses — Use #19,” an inventive celebration of the age-old material, wood.

The ultimate feel of the show stems from the fact that Anderson Ranch deferred to the Art Museum, as the hosting facility, in the final selection of jurors. All three of the jurors come from the urban, contemporary museum world — though Dan Cameron appeared at an Anderson Ranch symposium a few years ago.

“I needed to have a comfort level,” said Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson, director and chief curator of the Art Museum. “I had to know who would come and make these choices, for us to relinquish curatorial control over the space. I needed to feel the decisions would be made by people I had the utmost confidence in. And I think Hunter wanted to make sure the jurors are people who are open to the wide variety of media their associated artists are known for.”

Whatever the look of the show, ARAC@AAM is likely to draw interest from a broad spectrum of the community: Those who favor the craft side of the visual arts, those with ties to Anderson Ranch, those who like the idea and artistic prospects of two top-tier local organizations collaborating in a major way.

Zuckerman Jacobson was in London recently, and made a Sunday visit to the Tate Britain museum. “It was clearly the activity of choice for grandparents and children, parents and children,” she said. “It might just be an urban difference, or a cultural difference. But I would like to see the museum as a routine Sunday activity for families. That’s the role a museum should play, and I’d like to see that more.

“We’ve been here 30 years. We are still young compared to a lot of museums across the country and the world. We’ve been working overtime to bring the most enriching programs that we can to the community, and continually refining our ability to understand what the community wants, and to provide that.”

ARAC@AAM is likely to be a step in that evolution.

ARAC@AAM: Anderson Ranch Arts Center at the Aspen Art Museum is showing through Dec. 7 at the Aspen Art Museum.

stewart@aspentimes.com