To Infinity and The Kirkland: Space Exhibit Is Worth the Trip

Space may be the final frontier, but Space Is the Place: Art & Design in the Atomic Age is one of two inaugural exhibits to open at The Kirkland since its merger with the Denver Art Museum in 2024. It opened March 1 — and the timing couldn’t be better. Project Hail Mary, the film adaptation of Andy Weir’s bestselling novel starring Ryan Gosling, hits theaters this Friday, and NASA’s Artemis 2 mission, the first crewed lunar orbit since the 1970s, is slated for April. Space, it seems, is having a moment.

The Kirkland’s Becca Goodrum is here for it. The assistant curator spent months assembling 51 objects — furniture, design pieces, paintings and sculpture — into an exhibition about what happens when artists and designers look to the skies and start dreaming.

“Space is sort of the ultimate muse for creatives,” Goodrum says. “When you imagine the unknown, your creativity is limitless — designers got in on the fun, fine artists got in on the fun. It’s delightfully outrageous.”

Goodrum also sees the show as a good entry point for people who might not otherwise find themselves at The Kirkland. “Maybe you’re into design, maybe you’re into paintings, maybe you’re into Star Trek,” she says. “There are a lot of entry points — I think this is a good one to bring friends who’ve never been here, because they’re going to find something to like.”

The show opens with the Atomic Age, which predates but overlaps with the Space Age, and the anxiety that came with it. But Space Age optimism won out in the 1960s, and designers ran with it. Suddenly, there were molded plastic chairs and space-helmet televisions. New materials gave birth to previously impossible objects. Price drops (and designer knockoffs) put the futuristic aesthetic into middle-class living rooms.

Star Trek: The Original Series makes a cameo in the exhibition, and it’s a good one. “The [Star Trek] prop masters had a very limited budget,” Goodrum says, “so they would go out in L.A. to local design stores and pick up mid-century modern props that looked futuristic and fill out their otherworldly sets.” Visitors can watch clips and try to spot those same objects on the walls and pedestals around them.

The show eventually comes home to Colorado, with a dedicated section featuring local artists — among them Vance Kirkland, Angelo di Benedetto and Beverly Rosen — who were just as caught up in the space age as anyone in New York or Helsinki.

“If you look around, all these things still look really futuristic to us today — and they’re decades old,” Goodrum says. “I find that so interesting. Maybe it’s because they were imagining a future we didn’t ever get to experience. We’re still kind of waiting.”

It’s a mood. But Goodrum is hopeful that’s exactly what visitors need right now.

“It’s okay to dream,” she says. “We can dream of a better future. And I’m hoping people get that from the objects.”

Space Is the Place: Art & Design in the Atomic Age is on view at The Kirkland, 1201 Bannock Street, through 2026. Included with general admission; free for members and for visitors 18 and under.