This article was originally posted on DenverPost.com on April 10, 2003.
The Denver Art Museum’s new addition will cost $90.5 million,
almost $30 million more than the original price tag, and will be
named in honor of longtime board member Frederic C. Hamilton, who
donated $20 million to an accompanying endowment.
The sizable increase in the price of the project will cover
“enhancements,” such as exterior titanium cladding and special
landscaping, according to museum director Lewis Sharp. The
additional $28 million will come from private donations and not
taxpayers, who approved a $62.5 million bond issue in November 1999
to pay for the essential cost of the building.
The honor for Hamilton, which came at a site dedication ceremony on
Wednesday, followed his donation of $20 million to an accompanying
endowment that will pay for maintenance and operations of the new
facility.
Hamilton, a former oil and gas executive who is now president and
chairman of the Hamilton Cos., has served on the museum’s board of
trustees for 25 years and is its current chairman, leading the
fundraising for the expansion.
His gift, which was described as the largest one-time donation ever
made to a Colorado cultural institution, is not Hamilton’s first
major contribution to a local cause. His name, for example, also
adorns a gymnasium in the University of Denver’s Ritchie Center.
“When you ask people to give and give substantially,” he said,
“you’ve got to be there yourself. You’ve got to be counted on. So
I felt I had to make a leadership gift.
“More importantly, I wanted to, because I’m so committed to the
whole concept of this project.”
More than 300 civic and arts leaders, journalists and members of
the public attended Wednesday’s event, which took place under a
tent on the now-vacant future site of the 146,000-square-foot
addition on the southwest corner of West 13th Avenue and Acoma
Street.
The ceremony, which brought the project one step closer to its
projected spring 2006 completion, was carefully not called a
groundbreaking, because excavation is not set to begin until late
June.
The potential significance of this building for Denver in terms of
tourism and the city’s reputation was emphasized by speaker after
speaker, including Mayor Wellington Webb.
He said the project will have the same impact on Denver and the
Rocky Mountain region that Frank Gehry’s much touted billowing
design had for the Guggenheim Bilbao museum on Spain.
“This is a highlight for Denver,” said Webb, a strong backer of
the bond issue. “This is a highlight for us as an administration,
but it’s really a highlight for all of you, the voters. And I just
want to say thank you for what you’ve done.”
Press inquiries about the expansion already have come from as far
away as Japan and India, and Paul Goldberger, architectural critic
for The New Yorker magazine, attended Wednesday’s event.
Among the guests of honor was Daniel Libeskind, who was little
known outside of architectural circles when he was selected from
among 40 candidates in July 2000 to oversee the addition’s design.
The ceremony marked Libeskind’s first appearance in Denver since he
was named in late February as the architect for the reconstruction
at the World Trade Center site in New York City, a commission that
catapulted him into the international spotlight.
This effect of this new celebrity was evident after Wednesday’s
ceremony, as he signed autographs like a sports star while making
his way through the crowd to waiting TV cameras outside the tent.
“Living in these tumultuous times that we see on television,” he
said in his remarks, “I think there is nothing more optimistic,
there is nothing more constructive than the act of building a
building.”
Although the World Trade Center project will be in the forefront of
his activities for the next 10 to 15 years, the now New York-based
Libeskind said he will not neglect Denver.
“I want to be here every couple of weeks,” he said, “because I
want to see the construction and control what’s going on at the
site. So I will be here throughout the whole process of
construction until the very end. It means a lot to me, because it’s
my first building in my country – the United States – and it’s
going to be great.”
