Many contemporary art museums focused exclusively on rotating exhibitions and not building collections have large open spaces and movable walls they configure differently for each offering.
But the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver decided to take a different tack, drawing on the past to move into the future.
Its $15 million building, which is underway at 15th and Delgany streets, will have five distinctive, discrete galleries tailored to fit the media they will house – works on paper, new media, large works, photography and projects.
“The test is to make a kunsthalle where you engage the multiplicity of contemporary art by making specific proportioned conditions for each one,” said London architect David Adjaye, who oversaw the design.
“So you don’t make generic systems. You don’t try and turn it into an office building where you kind of partition it up.”
The spaces range in size from a 500-square-foot projects gallery to a 2,200-square-foot large works room, which has a prominent position on the museum’s second floor.
A large door will be installed into the side of the second level above the loading dock that will allow oversized works of art to be hoisted directly into the building. The floors have been reinforced to support large loads, such as steel sculptures.
Unlike the museum’s leased space at 1275 19th St., the new display space will have the proper humidity and temperature controls as well as necessary behind-the-scenes workspace and storage areas.
In addition to the exhibition areas, the new building will have two educational spaces – the family-oriented, rooftop Idea Box, and the basement-level Whole Room, which can seat as many as 200 people.
“It’s not a huge space,” director/curator Cydney Payton said of the latter. “We’re not going to do our gala dinner there. This is a very reasonably sized space that allows us to have some small dinner events, lectures, performances and readings.”
