Picture Hangers

What goes on behind the scenes at an art museum usually stays behind the scenes. That’s about to change as MCA Denver turns its local-themed Critical Focus series spotlight on its own installation team. The exhibition, Critical Focus: MCA Installation Team, which opens to the public tonight, consists of diverse works from MCA’s own Josh Bemelen, Casey Campbell, Noah Manos and Nick Silici, who all make art when they’re not putting it up. Curator Nora Burnett Abrams says it’s MCA’s way of “saying that we believe in them,” and the actual work, she adds, warrants recognition: “The integrity with which they realize so many other artists’ work is also apparent in their own work.”

The talented quartet’s members are all natives and/or long involved with the local art scene, but they take radically divergent paths: “Some of the works are very minimalist, slowing you down as you look at them,” Abrams says. “Others are very busy. They range from a real delicacy of forms to a more industrial aesthetic, and there are also some amazing photographs and photograms that are so eerie and uncanny. You know — like you’re not sure what you’re looking at, but you can’t stop looking at them.”

The show opens with a public celebration from 8 to 10 p.m., along with Landscape M, an exhibition of photos by Heimrad Bäcker; both exhibits continue through January 5. The MCA is at 1485 Delgany Street; for information, visit mcadenver.org.

Sept. 27-Jan. 5, 2013