Let There Be Light

Lights might be the best part of the holiday season: neighborhoods and business districts all lit up, more lights twinkling on trees and candles aglow in menorahs, kinaras and luminarias. And the enjoyment of those magical lights is a piece of childhood that never leaves us; as they turn off…

Something’s Coming, Something Good

I first saw the movie of West Side Story at a drive-in as a little girl, but that first time, tinny window speakers and all, was a love-at-first-sight moment. I hadn’t seen many musicals at my then-tender age, but I knew immediately that it was radically different: Ruthlessly modern and…

Art for All Ages

Aurora sometimes gets a ho-hum rap from the urbanistas to the west, but the sprawling gateway to the plains certainly has its hidden treasures. Downtown Aurora Visual Arts, which provides a creative haven for at-risk youth of all ages, is one of them, offering year-round art-making programs led by a…

What’s Next?

Not many artists can say that they had their first gallery show when they were in the fourth grade. But they’re not the artists now featured in I Have a Dream…Dreamers’ Art Exhibit at NEXT Gallery. The idea behind the show was simple: During Denver Arts Week, and in conjunction…

Nature’s Way

When Maruca Salazar took over a couple of years ago as director of Museo de las Americas, she envisioned a curatorial pattern that would feature Latino art in an alternating series of contemporary, traditional and folk art exhibitions. She’s filled the folk art slot beautifully with Wixaritari: Huichol Art of…

LoDo Aglow demonstrates the light stuff

Entries in the third annual LoDo Aglow contest — for which 22 businesses in lower downtown decorated their windows — ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous. The really ridiculous. Who knew that one of Santa’s elves was a pole dancer? But that was just one of the revelations in…

New Year’s Eve 2011 Denver: ten best upscale events

We’ve listed the best cheap events — and the best free events — in the area on New Year’s Eve, but if you’ve got money to burn or want to impress someone really special (it is your last chance to do that in 2011, after all), we’ve got you covered…

Jenny Shank leads a literary tour of Denver

Read it and reap! We’ve long lamented the lack of a strong literary history of Denver — and now Jenny Shank, author of The Ringer, has provided one, just published on the em>Poets and Writers web site. “Colorado has often been a boom and bust state,” she writes, “attracting outsized…

Vaclav Havel’s revolution was a testament to the subversive power of art

Vaclav Havel, the unassuming playwright dissident who helped spearhead the Velvet Revolution of 1989 that overthrew Communism in Czechoslovakia, died on December 18. He became the country’s president after the revolution, presiding over its peaceful break-up into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, leaving and then returning to the office, before…

The ten best moments in Denver arts: 2011

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Okay, It actually wasn’t either of those things — but 2011 was pretty okay in its own right, and at certain times it was downright awesome. Because we’re in the business of thoroughly cataloging things, we’ve cataloged the…

West of Center is more a cultural documentary than an art show

The art of the West’s introduction to the world came in the 1970s, when paintings and photos from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries suddenly became highly sought after in the marketplace. By now, this kind of emblematic Western work — stunning landscapes, charming scenes of cowboys and Indians…

Now Showing

Birger Sandzén. Though Birger Sandzén was born in Sweden, studied painting there and in Paris and later made his permanent home in Kansas, we in Colorado can claim him as one of our own. Sandzén found his muse here — in our stunning scenery — and after his first extended…

Now Playing

It’s a Wonderful Life. The film It’s a Wonderful Life is a much-loved American classic. Some families watch it together year after year at this time, like Miracle on 34th Street and varying versions of A Christmas Carol. What makes It’s a Wonderful Life interesting and original is the twist,…

The U.S. version of Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is leaner, meaner, more stylish

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is hardly a personal project. Still, David Fincher’s sveltely malevolent remake of the 2009 Swedish blockbuster directed by Niels Arden Oplev from Stieg Larsson’s rambling thriller — a posthumously published international bestseller and Kindle record-holder — is a recognizably Fincherian caper. The movie, which…