DENVER— No matter what you make of the Denver Art Museum’s new addition, there’s no question that it has raised the profile of the Mile High City. The Hamilton Building, architect Daniel Libeskind’s first project in the United States, is a wild response to the sober call of Gio Ponti’s 1971 North Building. An eruption of jagged titanium-clad forms, it has snagged massive national and international press, adding Denver to the select but growing list of adventurous and savvy cities that have erected must-see art museums whose silhouettes are as iconic as Monopoly tokens, if somewhat larger. 

The Denver Art Museum has not only brought in tourists but also lassoed the locals, which in the spread-out open West means anyone within a 400-mile radius. The DAM has long been known for its extraordinary collection of Native American art, its impressive holdings of pre-Columbian and Spanish Colonial works, and its innovative educational programming, especially for young children. Hot DAM: Art at All Hours, the 35-hour kickoff for the Hamilton Building one year ago, drew Denverites in droves. And with 22,000 square feet of sorely needed new temporary-exhibition space, the museum hopes both to keep them coming back and to attract new audiences with exhibitions like this fall’s “Artisans & Kings: Selected Treasures from the Louvre” that would previously have bypassed Denver en route from coast to coast.

Libeskind has said he was “inspired by the light and the geology of the Rockies, but most of all by the wide-open faces of the people of Denver.” The architect, bruised by the testy debates surrounding his master plan for the World Trade Center site in New York, may have wanted to be politic, but his comment reflects the perception of Denver as a power-to-the-people metropolis. After all, it was the local population who passed a $62.5 million bond initiative in 1999 to support the DAM’s $110 million expansion. On a per capita basis, Denver collects more for the arts than any other city in the United States. Its One Percent for Art program requires that 1 percent of the budget for new public works be spent on cultural projects. And a 20-year-old sales tax of one penny on every $10 spent (roughly $36 million a year) funds over 300 cultural organizations. So it’s fitting that engraved in the façade of the 2002 municipal building named for former mayor Wellington Webb is the rhetorical question “What Is the City but the People?”

Under current mayor John Hickenlooper, who is also a geologist, entrepreneur, and supporter of the arts, Denver pulled off an impressive coup, landing the highly sought-after estate of pioneering Abstract Expressionist Clyfford Still. For 25 years, the bulk of Still’s oeuvre—2,400 pieces, representing 94 percent of his life’s work—has been out of the public eye. That will all change when the Clyfford Still Museum, designed by Allied Works Architecture, opens in 2010 immediately adjacent to the Hamilton Building.

In spite of the more than 150 works of public art that dot the town, what the people of Denver are mostly wide open to are recreational opportunities. It isn’t easy distracting Denverites from the 650 miles of paved bike trails throughout the city and the infinite thrills offered by the Rockies that fence in the western horizon. When the Museum of Contemporary Art reopens this fall, its new home will be competing not just with the DAM across town but also with a building just a stroll away, over the 15th Street Bridge: the Denver flagship of REI (Recreational Equipment, Inc.). Within the former Denver Tramway power station, a 1901 landmark that’s three times the size of the Museum of Contemporary Art, are a 45-foot-high climbing pinnacle, a mountain bike course, and test stations for everything from bike lights to camp stoves to outdoor footwear. In the Titanium Cold Chamber, for instance, customers can test sleeping bags and parkas in temperatures as low as 30 degrees below zero.

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.

DENVER COMPASS

Stay:

THE BROWN PALACE
Completed in 1892, Denver’s grand dame of a hotel is not to be missed. Go for tea in the staggering eight-story atrium, the urban equivalent of the most magnificent of National Park lodge lobbies. Or duck into the Ship’s Tavern for an ale and a gander at the antique clipper ship models. The 241 rooms and suites range in style from vaguely Victorian to Art Deco-ish.
321 17th St.
800/321-2599
RATES: $200–$1,200
www.brownpalace.com

HOTEL TEATRO
Located in what was once the Denver Tramway Building, the Hotel Teatro takes its inspiration from the Denver Center for the Performing Arts across the street. Gently riding its theme, the hotel selected fantastic costumes and large black-and-white photo-graphs of actors in theatrical productions to decorate its public spaces and 110 rooms. Service is center stage. As for the dreamy beds, they’re, well, mile-high.
1100 14th St.
888/727-1200
RATES: $250–$1,400
www.hotelteatro.com

THE OXFORD
At 80 rooms, the Oxford is more intimate than its younger sister, the Brown Palace. From the beginning the Oxford itself supported the arts, largely by taking in trade paintings. As recently as the 1970s artists were still singing (or, in the case of Tom Waits, growling) for their supper.
1600 17th St.
800/228-5838
RATES: $200–$800
www.theoxfordhotel.com

Eat:

That Denver hosts the Great American Beer Festival each fall may explain its fine taste for hops and prolonged adolescence when it comes to food. But there are pockets of maturity at smaller, chef-owned restaurants.

FRASCA
If you didn’t book your table a month in advance, a spot at the bar is still worth the half-hour drive to Boulder. Sommelier Bobby Stuckey and chef Lachlan Mackinon-Patterson, French Laundry alums and Slow Food members, are your guides to transcendent farmhouse tastes of the Fruili-Venezia Giulia region like frico caldo, stufato, and a selection of prosciutto, speck, and salame that’s not to be missed.
1738 Pearl St.
Boulder, CO
303/442-6966

POTAGER
Ten years on, it’s still hard to get a table at this former storefront tucked away on a residential street in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, especially on Wednesdays and Saturdays, when chef Teri Rippeto is freshly inspired by her morning trip to the farmer’s market in Boulder.
109 Ogden St.
303/832-5788

RIOJA/ BISTRO VENDOME
If chef Jennifer Jasinski were ever to remove the artichoke mousse and goat cheese tortelloni from the menu at Rioja, her faithful would walk out—across the street to the latest restaurant to fall into her capable hands, Bistro Vendome. There, traditional steak tartare and escargots are popular, as is the weekend brunch.
Rioja
1431 Larimer St.
303/820-2282
Bistro Vendome
1420 Larimer St.
303/825-3232

SUSHI SASA
If the crowds at Sushi Sasa are any indication, Denver is yearning to veer from the steak (and buffalo and elk) path. Chef Wayne Conwell may link Japan with the cuisines of other nations in dishes like saffron marinara mussels, but he also brews his own soy sauce and is picky about the sushi chefs he hires and the fish he imports.
2401 15th St. #80
303/433-7272

Z CUISINE
Chef Patrick DuPays’s French ways with Colorado lamb have lured so many fans that Z has already more than doubling its space. DuPays is on top of the local-purveyor trend even if his dishes, like cassoulet and country paté, are steeped in tradition.
2239 W. 30th Ave.
303/477-1111

Play:

CRUISE ROOM
Modeled after a lounge on the Queen Mary, the Oxford Hotel’s restored 1933 bar is a tucked-away lozenge that plays Duke Ellington tunes on the jukebox and serves a delicious lemon drop cocktail.
1600 17th St.
303/628-5400

P DESIGN GALLERY
Since opening the P Design Gallery just a year ago, Paul and Pifuka Hardt have introduced Denver to designers such as Brooklyn-based Jason Miller (whose porcelain antler light fixture somehow seems less radical in the West than it does back east) as well as to homegrown talent like David Larabee and Dexter Thornton of DoubleButter, who have mastered the art of the simple and angular. Their Roadrunner side chair in oiled MDF is an exercise in the economy of design and materials.
2590 Walnut St.
720/259-2516
www.pdesigngallery.com

RED ROCKS AMPITHEATRE
In the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, about 15 miles west of town—sheltered by a starry sky and bookended by Ship Rock and Creation Rock, two sandstone ledges taller than Niagara Falls—Bob Dylan, Snow Patrol, and Diana Krall never sounded so good.
8300 W. Alameda Pkwy.
Morrison, CO
720/865-2494
www.redrocksonline.com

ROCKMOUNT RANCH WEAR
Stop in to chat with Papa Jack, the 106-year-old founder of Rockmount Ranch Wear. He may be right when he says, “There’s no Westerner like an Easterner,” but that shouldn’t stop you from buying a bona fide cowboy shirt. After all, they were good enough for Ennis and Jack up on Brokeback Mountain. Also check out the “Cowgirls Forever”–studded belts.
1626 Wazee St.
303/629-7777
www.rockmount.com

THE TATTERED COVER
One of the best bookstores anywhere and undoubtedly responsible for Denver’s claim to have the second-most-educated population in the U.S., after New York.
1628 16th Street
303/436-1070
www.tattteredcover.com

See:

DENVER ART MUSEUM
100 W. 14th Ave.
720/865-5000
www.denverartmuseum.org

DIKEOU COLLECTION
1615 California St.
303/623-3001
www.dikeoucollection.org

THE LAB AT BELMAR
404 S. Upham St.
303/934-1777
www.belmarlab.org

DENVER MOCA
1840 15th Street
303/298-7554
www.mcartdenver.org

PLUS GALLERY
2350 Lawrence St.
303/296-0927
www.plusgallery.com

ROBISCHON GALLERY
1740 Wazee St.
303/298-7788
www.robischongallery.com

WILLIAM HAVU GALLERY
1040 Cherokee st.
303/893-2360
www.williamhavugallery.com

"Art, Art on the Range" comes to ARTINFO from the October/November 2007 issue of Culture + Travel magazine.