Outside the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden, Colorado — I love this hand-painted sign.
Post updated in January 2021 with minor text edits. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 23 May 2010.
Colorado
Angularity at Denver Art
The Denver Art Museum’s new (c. 2006) Hamilton Building will make you do the Angle Dance, guaranteed.
Not one of the building’s planes — floor, wall, or ceiling — is parallel or perpendicular to another. Consider that for a moment.
Studio Libeskind’s design is meant to evoke “the peaks of the Rocky Mountains and geometric rock crystals found in the foothills near Denver,” an idea the exhibit designers ran with. Suspend your disbelief and peaks and rock crystals can be found everywhere — in the artwork hung directly onto skewed walls and the sculptures tucked into odd spaces where acute and obtuse walls meet.
You don’t actually have to suspend your disbelief to appreciate the angularity brought to aspects of the exhibit design, such as the display cases in the gallery of African art.
I’m not crazy about the light fixtures — they’re big and distracting! — but otherwise, the cases are intriguing and beautifully highlight the artwork and objects on display.
The dimensional letters used for gallery names are pretty incredible. The letters’ faces are perpendicular to the floor, and the depth, top-to-bottom, varies to meet the angle of the wall. I love the beautiful shapes and the shadows they create.
As for the art itself, I was surprised to find that I enjoyed the gallery of post-1900 Western American art (it’s not a genre I’d usually leap to explore). I also liked this installation by Sandy Skoglund.
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Post updated in January 2021 with minor text edits. Broken links have been fixed. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 20 May 2010.