For the past 28 years, Dianne Vanderlip has reigned supreme at the Denver Art Museum as the head of contemporary art, one of the museum’s biggest and best departments. Over the nearly three decades she was there, Vanderlip built a widely renowned collection with real depth in the art of…
Breaking the Mold. In 2003, Connecticut collector Virginia Vogel Mattern donated some 300 pieces of contemporary American Indian art to the Denver Art Museum. For one of the special shows inaugurating the new Frederic C. Hamilton Building, Native Arts curator Nancy Blomberg has selected over a hundred works for the…
Cocaine Cowboys (Magnolia) Slam! Bang! Pow! Snort! This tawdry and giddy documentary tells the story of Miami’s transformation from a place where old people go to die to a place with so much drug money that the Mercedes dealers were constantly out of stock, where the hit men would rather…
For most of us, the closest we get to practicing medicine is telling a depressed co-worker, “Somebody’s got a case of the Mondays.” But that doesn’t stop us from living vicariously through TV doctors. Now, with Trauma Center: Second Opinion, you can take your surgical dreams one step further. Thanks…
The Cat’s Pajamas is taking a much-needed stretch after a mid-winter cat nap. You see, Cat really hates the cold. Sure, the first day is all sledding and hot chocolate and weeee!, but by week six, nobody looks cute in stocking caps and knitted scarves. Everyone just looks disheveled and…
Every American over the age of fifty vividly remembers seeing the pictures of Jacqueline Kennedy in her bloodstained pink suit after her husband was assassinated. But in Jacks, award-winning playwright Lys Anzia delves far below the surface of what happened to the First Lady that day, as well as the…
The history of cabaret is a fantastic mixed bag said to have gotten its start in the Montmartre district of late-nineteenth-century Paris, specifically when the famous bohemian hangout Le Chat Noir opened its doors to a motley crew of artist types eager to share their talents in a casual environment…
Colorado has caught Civil War fever, a direct result of the Forever Free: Abraham Lincoln’s Journey to Emancipation exhibit’s stop in our fair state. Now you can beef up your knowledge — and your personal library — at the Civil War Book Sale, taking place today from noon to 5…
Although he isn’t a physical match for the late Paul Robeson — the powerful African-American singer, actor, civil-rights activist, McCarthy-era blacklistee and All-American athlete — local performer Russell Costen found plenty of ways to embody the big man’s energy when Shadow Theatre Company first staged Philip Hayes Dean’s biographical one-man…
Aspen is as gritty as a picture, thanks to the Red Bull Illume Image Quest 2006, the first-ever international action-and-adventure sports-photography competition whose finalists go on display today at the base of the Little Nell Run on Aspen Mountain. “We really wanted to honor and celebrate the photographers in the…
It’s that time again — time for teams of four people from around the world to pool their resources and prepare to attack a twelve-foot-tall, twenty-ton block of machine-made snow. Their mission? To change the block into a work of art in a mere five days, using only their ingenuity…
Lyons author Sandi Ault has her fingerprints all over Wild Indigo, an auspicious debut mystery novel inspired by Ault’s love of the northern New Mexico landscape and its tangled Indian/Hispanic/Anglo cultures. Open the book and you’ll soon understand that there’s a good measure of Ault’s own personality in the protagonist…
A good torch song should make your heart weep. Think a glittery-dressed woman lounging on top of a piano, crooning about lost love. Now envision that songstress as a gay Jewish drag queen in 1970s New York. Although the medium may be different, the message within the song is the…
Let’s face it: It’s a new year, the weather hasn’t been so great and the recent spate of snowstorms delivered a below-the-belt punch not only to small retailers, but to galleries counting on the bounty of the season. The folks at the Chicano Humanities and Arts Council, 772 Santa Fe…
Written and directed by Guillermo del Toro, Pan¹s Labyrinth is something alchemical. To an astonishing degree, the 42-year-old Mexican filmmaker best known for his contribution to the Blade and Hellboy franchises has transformed the horror of mid-twentieth-century European history into a boldly fanciful example of what surrealists would call le…
In the new Clint Eastwood movie, ordinary young men — husbands and fathers, artisans and aristocrats — are drafted into a war whose motives many of them do not fully understand. There, on an island called Iwo Jima, they fight against an enemy who has been demonized by wartime propaganda…
The Good German, directed by Steven Soderbergh from Joseph Kanon’s bestseller, is as much simulation as movie. Specifically, it’s the simulation of a 1940s private-eye flick. It’s not just a period film, but one that feigns being shot as it would have been in that period. Filmed for maximum chiaroscuro…
Yes, yes, yes, we all know that power is the ultimate aphrodisiac, although I think it’s seduced more powerful men into selling their souls — like Henry Kissinger, the morally decayed author of that quote — than it has nubile young women into hopping in bed with the old goats…
I loved Our Town when I was sixteen and played Emily at school, but I didn’t remember much about it. I knew that Thornton Wilder’s play was a sweetly moving evocation of small-town American life at the beginning of the twentieth century, but with a plot involving perpetually kitchen-bound women,…
The Big Bang. Sometimes it’s nice not to have to think too much, to just settle back and watch a couple of frenetically energetic guys working really hard to earn your good will — and your entertainment dollars. Oh, and to make you laugh. The Big Bang posits the following…
Like the art world in general, Denver is focusing in on photo-based pieces (pun intended). More likely than not, you haven’t seen the many excellent offerings currently on display because of the difficulty in getting around on deeply rutted streets. Last week I braved the elements to check out some…
I don’t put much stock in shows installed in non-art businesses, because they’re typically thrown together and feature the work of hobbyist-artists. So it wasn’t until I’d heard a lot of positive buzz about OBJECT + THOUGHT (3559 Larimer Street, 720-226-9196), the graphic-design firm that presents exhibitions in its lobby,…
