Denver field trip

Since I will be moving to Nebraska sometime this summer, I thought I'd take some time over the next few months to take some photos in Denver.

My friend Melanie is a photographer so we decided to go out on the town Sunday afternoon.  But our plans were somewhat changed when we found out there is a new "Modern Masters" exhibit at the Denver Art Museum. It was a really good exhibit, briefly touching on the different art periods (Surrealism, abstract expressionism, etc) from 1880-1980. They had quite a few nice examples of each and I thought it was well put together. 

Included in the price of admission was entry to the Clifford Still Museum next door. They had a special exhibit of some of his work, somewhat replicating a gallery show he had in 1959.  I like Still, but am not a huge fan.  Melanie said some of the paintings reminded her of cow hides, so I said I liked the Holsteins (black and white ones). The architecture of the Still museum is cool and very concrete. I love this patterned ceiling that lets the light in.

I left the guy in this picture to show the size of these paintings. They are massive. Clifford Still left the art scene in the late 50's (I believe the 1959 show was one of his last) and when he passed away a few years ago (?), he had 3000 works that were to go to a city willing to build a museum for them.  Somehow that ended up being Denver after the decision making. Still must have had a huge warehouse to store 3000 enormous paintings!

City skyline (McNicholls Building in the foreground).  Across Civic Center Park from the museums is the McNicholls Building.  I had never been in it before, but knew it was used for art-related events and it had huge welcome banners so we went in.

 
They have two exhibits which are free to the public.  One exhibit is 25 years of printmaking. There was a wide range of prints on display and it was quite a nice show. There were a lot of pieces that used photography in their printmaking process, which I didn't find quite as interesting as the others.

If you don't know, I love the artist Nick Cave. One of his screenprints was included in the show.

Nick Cave screenprint

The other exhibit was "The New West" and it had a variety of different art expressing this idea. I really liked this painting (I forgot to write down the artist's name, sorry!). I thought both shows were definitely worth checking out, especially since we were in the neighborhood.

 Meininger's is one of the big local art supply stores. This orange-ish building downtown was their original location.  It's been empty for over 10 years. I thought the contrast between it and all the high-rise hotels was interesting.

 California St

 

 The big blue bear.

 The Corner Office, nice swanky bar for a drink before a show at the Buell.

 Buell parking garage stairwell and theater entrance.

 Sam's #3, good Mexican food.

 16th St Mall

By this point, our feet hurt and we had to go to the Rio for some refreshment and a snack.  We didn't get very far in our photo adventures since we were distracted by all the art exhibits, so we are planning another adventure soon.