At the recent R-Squared: Risk and Reward conference held in Telluride, Cengage Learning offered a $5,000 reward for the library/librarian that came up with the most innovative way to engage the library’s customers. Basically, how to make libraries cool again. Joseph Sanchez, an employee of the Auraria Library, came up…
It’s fitting for the small Abecedarian Gallery to end the year with an exhibition of small-scale art. All the two- and three-dimensional works in the Modest in Scale show are twelve inches or smaller in every dimension. “It’s a great show to have right before Christmas because people are out…
Has the calm before the edible storm that is Thanksgiving got you down in the dumps? Revolution Circus, a huge compendium of bands, freaks, sideshow acts, burlesque girls, body painters, acrobats, tatto artists, belly dancers, hoopers and other circusy things will take over City Hall for a many-leveled, single night…
You’d have to be living under a rock not to know who Vincent van Gogh was. And I’m not just talking about art enthusiasts: Anyone with even a minimal sense of culture will have heard of him, if only for the severed-ear story. One of the greatest post-impressionists of the…
Clyfford Still. For the opening of the Clyfford Still Museum, director Dean Sobel has installed a career survey of the great artist that starts with the artist’s realist self-portrait and features his remarkable post-impressionist works from the 1920s. Next are Still’s works from the ’30s, with some odd takes on…
Michael Paglia visits the Denver Art Museum for this week’s review, “Go van Gogh.” The exhibit expands on the work of the revered post-impressionist artist, and it deserves the sold-out attention it’s receiving. Continue reading for photos from Becoming van Gogh…
Girls Gone Wild will land in Denver on Sunday, when the Back to School Tour 2012 stops at PT’s Showclub at 1601 West Evans Avenue at 9 p.m. But Joe Francis, the founder of Girls Gone Wild, isn’t that wild himself these days — or so his company would like…
In this age of designer toys and Hello Kitty decor, art and playtime have already crossed over into shared territory. And Havu Gallery’s Toy Stories exhibit in the summer of 2011 took the concept to a higher level, using toy-like elements to appeal to an adult sensibility. The holiday season…
PechaKucha, the grownup show-and-tell series revived in Denver earlier this year, tonight will focus on a subject to which everyone can relate. All Things Edible will bring together an eclectic — with a capital “E” — group of experts together at Buntport Theater to share their viewpoints on the subject…
Denver’s Civic Center just added another attraction. Coral Sphere, a sculpture by Yvonne Domenge, was installed this morning in front of the McNichols Building. The two-ton, blue-steel sculpture was previously on display at the Boeing Galleries of Millennium Park in Chicago; it will now reside in Denver, like an abstract…
Every year since 1986, Denver has recognized creative individuals and organizations that make an artful impact on the community with the Mayor’s Awards for Excellence in the Arts. The 2012 winners were just announced, and for the first time, they were split into three new categories: Youth Arts, Entrepreneurial Arts…
Denver’s private Dikeou Collection has a permanent gallery space in a downtown Denver office building that’s a little hard to find, unless you know your way around the corporate world. As a remedy, the gallery’s Devon Dikeou also curates a more accessible ground-floor pop-up space in the Golden Triangle, which…
Conceptualist Susan Meyer, who teaches art at the University of Denver, is the subject of the provocatively titled Plato’s Retreat at Plus Gallery. What makes the title provocative is that it’s a reference to a well-known heterosexual swingers’ club that existed in New York in the late 1970s and early…
Unit E was named the Best New DIY Gallery in the Best of Denver 2012 — but two liquor-law enforcement agents thought that the Unit E crew had gone a little far in doing it themselves. And so they busted the place on Friday night, just hours after Mayor Michael…
The election is a time for taking sides — on issues, on candidates, on which of the watching parties has the best drink specials. But this year’s election joined a few sides along the way. (This is where you can go ahead and imagine is winking at you.) Continue reading…
When Samuel Schimek of the all-local I Heart Denver store in the Denver Pavilions sets out to do something, it more often than not seems to have a built-in public-service component. That’s definitely true of his first I Heart Denver webisode, which he personally wrote, directed and funded, with help…
Denver’s Dangerous Theatre lives up to its name, staging edgy and sometimes kinky theater of the sort we don’t often see in this town. And the current show, Jonathan Vick’s murky psychodrama Comfort in the Arms of the Damned, offers proof of that. But DDT’s guiding force, Winnie Wenglewick, wants…
While the thriving arts districts within Denver city limits will be rocking tonight as Denver Arts Week kicks off with Know Your Arts First Friday, one of the newest kids on the block, the 40 West Arts District, will be touting the local artists of…Lakewood, our suburban neighbor to the…
Think back on last night — or even better, last weekend. How did you spend your Halloween? Was it wild? Wonderful? Just weird? Chances are you probably invoked a bit of all three holiday spirits during your costumed festivities, and maybe you attracted some attention along the way. These people…
Pirate gallery’s annual Día de los Muertos celebration has been bringing family altars and candlelight processions to downtown and northside streets for close to thirty years. It’s one of several Day of the Dead celebrations taking place in Denver this weekend, which will merge Dead events with the very lively…
The distinction between recognizable imagery and abstract imagery is one of the key dialectics that has run through the modern and contemporary art worlds for the past 150 years. It’s not the only one — others include linear versus formal, narrative versus non-narrative, and on and on — it’s just…
In this week’s review, Michael Paglia visits the Kirkland Museum and the William Havu Gallery, both of which are offering solo shows in which the artists handle abstract subject matter. The exhibits deal with the distinction between recognizable imagery and abstract imagery. Continue reading for photos from both shows. See…
