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Art Mecca of the West

Paint the perfect weekend: three days in Denver

By Lindsey Howald

March 13, 2008 | 12:00 a.m. CST

Want to avoid the mob of tourists at the louvre and the meT? The Mile High City’s art scene boomed in the past decade, and a flurry of upstart galleries and museum projects has aficionados, celebrity architects and big-name artists heading to the Rockies.

THURSDAY

Before bunking in downtown Denver for an art-infused weekend, head west to Belmar, a neighborhood in culturally burgeoning Lakewood, Colo. There, The Laboratory of Art and Ideas might be surrounded by marks of urban sprawl, but the frenzy of creativity inside its glassed-in corner building pushes the art envelope as far as it can go.

Museum must-see: From June to August, The Lab hosts the wacky yet thought-provoking lecture series, Mixed Taste: Tag Team Lectures on Unrelated Topics. Every Thursday night, two lecturers with wildly different topics speak and meet afterward for a Q&A session that leads to some bizarre and fascinating connections. “We had 250 people show up for Marxism and Kittens, Kittens, Kittens last year,” says Adam Lerner, director of The Lab.

FRIDAY

Soak up Denver’s über-artsy vibe on the first Friday of every month when artists, patrons and locals flock to the First Friday Art Walk. More than 30 art galleries and a few working studios on Santa Fe Drive, the heart of the city’s blossoming art district, stay open late and tempt meandering art lovers to browse or buy.

SATURDAY

The Denver Art Museum (DAM), flagship of the Mile High City’s art scene, hosts rotating exhibits spanning art history’s broad spectrum. Big names such as van Gogh, Monet, Fraganard, Rothko, Cassatt and Warhol have appeared in permanent and temporary exhibitions. An area-specific collection of Spanish Colonial, American Indian and Pre-Columbian works earned the museum much fame.

Calling all celebrity architects: DAM’s new ultra-contemporary Hamilton Building, sleekly angled to imitate the Rocky Mountains, puts a hefty notch in internationally acclaimed Daniel Libeskind’s belt. Libeskind made history with his winning design for New York City’s World Trade Center Memorial.

Museum must-see: When the great abstract expressionist Clyfford Still died, he bequeathed nearly 95 percent of his life’s work (about 2,400 pieces) to the city willing to build an exclusive museum for it. A bidding war broke out, and Denver emerged as the proud victor. The Clyfford Still Museum was the result. It is scheduled for completion in 2010 — but from July to November, see 13 of his greatest pieces unveiled in the Hamilton Building.

The low down on LoDo: In the affectionately nicknamed LoDo (or Lower Downtown) about a mile from DAM’s Civic Center Park location, gleams the glassy, cube-shaped Museum of Contemporary Art. In five main galleries, the MCA displays thoughtfully curated exhibits with a focus on the regional and never-before-seen.

Museum must-see: MCA’s staggered rotation system means there’s always something new on view. Making an appearance this summer are paper sculptor and photographer Jasper de Beijer and German painter Suzanne Kuhn.

Free peeks: Plan ahead and visit the museums on the first Saturday of the month. Rates plummet to one cent at the MCA and are free at the DAM.

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