Lisa Call

Last night I attended a preview event at the brand new building for the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) here in Denver. The museum doesn’t open to the public until saturday but they are having a few members only preview events this week to help with the fund raising for the building. A nice building for the contemporary art museum in Denver is something I am very happy to support.

I thought the building was wonderful. It definitely complimented the art on display and it was great to not be disoriented by weird angles like in the new Hamilton Building at the Denver Art Museum. The environmentally friendly design is both wonderful and responsible.

A few factoids on the building from the MCA Denver website:

- A DESIGN THAT SUPPORTS RATHER THAN DEFINES THE MUSEUM’S MISSION. The design clearly articulates the Museum’s exhibition and program requirements.

- A FISCALLY RESPONSIBLE PROJECT. The construction cost for the new building is $11.3 million making the project $418 per square foot.

- AN ENVIRONMENTALLY-EFFICIENT BUILDING. MCA is actively pursuing LEED certification, which would make MCA the first contemporary art museum in the country to achieve such status.

Several of the artists that had work in the inagural exhibit, Star Power: Museum as Body Electric, or that have site specific installations in the museum (a roof top garden and art in the walk way leading up to the entrance) gave a short talk about their work.

I thoroughly enjoyed hearing Rangi Kipa’s description of his art and thoughts about how his work fits into his culture, country and the art world. After spending 5 months in New Zealand I’m always very interested in anything New Zealand and the Maori culture. Brought back good memories, now I want to go back.

The only disappointment of the evening was learning that not all of the artists were there. They split them between last night and an similar event tonight so I didn’t get to hear some artists I had hoped to. I also also hoping to hear the architect speak but I either missed that or it was tonight.

One thing that struck me was that all of the artists were very good at talking about their art. With this blog I’ve gotten better at writing about my art but speaking about it in person, I’m terrible at it. Definitely something I need to work on.

I really like the way the museum is handling the grand opening. The first visitors invited to the museum were school kids on monday and tuesday, before the member’s only cocktail parties. In their words "reversing the idea of the VIP"

The museum isn’t quite finished, as it doesn’t open to the public until saturday so not all of the art has been installed and they didn’t have up signs with artist information and there were no maps but even with these small details to finish up the museum is looking wonderful. And the hors dourves were yummy.