DENVER, COLORADO. - The Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver (established in 1996) hopes to open a new building in 2006 and architects have been eager to take the project on. Forty firms responded to the museum’s request for proposals. In December, a selection committee chose six finalists, generally mid-career architects and all with international reputations. Now, each will be in Denver beginning February 9 to make presentations to the museum’s board and public.
The institution is considering a 15,000- 18,000-square-foot building on the northwest corner of 15th and Delgany streets, diagonally across from the new Gates Corp. headquarters in the Central Platte Valley. Museum officials estimate its price will be $3.6 million to $4 million, with additional funds needed for an operations endowment. "I don’t think we’re there accurately in terms of the building cost. I think it can be less," said Karl Kister, president of the museum’s board of trustees. "I’d really like to show the limits of what we could do - building a great building for very little. It’s an amazing challenge for an architect." Supporters say the relatively short history of the contemporary art museum as well as still-developing support for the visual arts in Denver - especially contemporary art - explain why the proposed size and scale for the institution’s new building makes sense. Director/curator Cydney Payton envisions a flexible, "radiantly elegant yet simple" structure that emphasizes the art and not itself, giving viewers a more direct experience of the works on view with as little architectural interference as possible.
Although some cities have had contemporary museums for decades, there has been a boom in establishing such institutions in the past two decades. The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Missouri, for example, opened in a 23,200-square-foot building in 1994 and now draws more than 120,000 visitors a year. Rachael Blackburn, the museum’s director, attributes the surge in such museums to increased interest in contemporary art in general, a phenomenon she ties to the business world’s new emphasis on creativity in a time when new technologies and constant change make adaptability and innovation more important than ever. "I think it’s become a sort of barometer for how cosmopolitan or how successful or how forward- thinking a city is," Blackburn said.