Ideas are what will be put to the test at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s new home. Counting on the David Adjaye–designed building to be as alluring as the DAM’s Hamilton Building, the MCA nonetheless views its architecture as representing a different strategy. “The design sup-ports rather than defines our mission,” says executive director and chief curator Cydney Payton. “We’re a non-collecting institution dedicated to art of the past 10 years, to cross-disciplinary discourse, and to the dynamism of Denver, which artists and intellectuals move in and out of.”

Where others might see a lack of sophistication, Payton sees advantages in Denver’s relative youth (it was officially founded as a city in 1858). “The West is an active experiment,” she says. “We are not inert or provincial in the sense of being entrenched.” The absence of barriers, for artists and art fans alike, will be reflected in the new building. A box of black milk glass on the exterior with translucent white walls inside, the museum will have not so much a front door as an open corner, inviting the curious to come on in. “The degree of anticipation around MCA Denver is huge,” says Payton. “Locally, everyone’s very excited, but they don’t know what they’re going to get. There’s a great element of mystery.”

Much of the contemporary-art scene in Denver is likewise far from obvious. One must seek it out in such places as the fifth floor of the historic Colorado Building downtown, in an enfilade of offices behind Sam Spade–like doors. There, the Dikeou Collection, curated by Denver-born Devon Dikeou, publisher of zingmagazine, shows the work of more than 25 contemporary international artists, such as Momoyo Torimitsu and Paul Ramirez-Jonas. Even more discreet is the nomadic Invisible Museum, inaugurated one year ago, whose mission is “to serve as a conduit for the cross-pollination of ideas and to help the creative community understand itself by making visible that which is not.” Taking that mission literally to the streets, artist Rainer Ganahl, sponsored by the museum, hooded parking meters in black cloths, exhorting residents to “use a bicycle.”

Since May 2004, some of the most provocative programming of contemporary art has been taking place, incongruously, in the heart of the Denver suburb of Lakewood. Unlike many nominally experimental organizations, the Laboratory of Art and Ideas at Belmar, which moved into new quarters in the heart of Lakewood’s Belmar development in 2006, actually lives up to its name. Executive director Adam Lerner—whose advisory board includes professors, artists, independent curators, and the chiefs of such innovative venues as London’s Whitechapel Art Gallery—leaves no medium unturned. The lab is the democratic home for lectures combined with rock shows (Rock Your Mind: Your Ass Will Follow) and significant exhibitions of notable artists like the cynical realist Fang Lijun.

Just as there is no one area in which artists cluster (although a section called RiNo, north of downtown, is staking its claim as the quarter where art is made), the best galleries are sprinkled all over the city. And in spite of the inroads made by such newcomers as Ivar Zeile of Plus Gallery, Paul and Pifuka Hardt of P Design Gallery, and the artists cooperative Ironton Studios in pioneering districts and championing (or generating) local art scenes, Denver’s first contemporary-art gallerists, like Robin Rule, William Havu, and Jim Robischon, remain, for the most part, its best. Robischon, who represents such greats as Richard Serra and Judy Pfaff, nevertheless is sometimes turned down by artists because Denver is not yet viewed as a favorable career stepping stone. Still, he sees Libeskind’s building (“one wild-ass piece of architecture”), the Laboratory of Art and Ideas at Belmar, and the Museum of Contemporary Art’s new home as great steps forward for Denver. “All of it can’t be anything but positive,” he says, “because it plants the seed.”

No doubt the perception of an exploding art scene will feed that scene further. While the Miami artist-architect team of Roberto Behar and Rosario Marquardt were in town working on their Peace Project for the MCA, they were captivated by Denver as “a city of the fantastic” and soon accepted an invitation to create a permanent work of art. Their playful tower of giant letter blocks stacked up across the street from the Denver Performing Arts Complex spells out the attitude that has accounted for Denver’s success thus far and that will move it forward in the future as an art destination: ALL TOGETHER NOW.