Instead, you can take them to a real urban jungle of a play place, because the Denver Art Museum had the brilliant idea to resurrect the installation Rupprecht Matthies: ¿Being Home?, a fabulous museum purchase that debuted two years ago as part of immensely popular, hands-on Embrace! exhibition. Pssst: Just as with a holiday movie for families that's shot through with double entendres for the adults, you don't have to be a kid to enjoy it.
Westword art critic Michael Paglia described it thus in 2009:
For this piece, facsimiles of words were created out of various materials and then piled up on the floor, mounted on the walls or hung from the ceiling. The words -- and even the handwriting styles -- originated with the diverse group of local individuals who submitted them. The words were made of different materials, with the cloth-covered pillow-like ones marking another layer of collaboration, as a crew of volunteer seamstresses ran them up in a kind of sew-in. Which in real life translates into something you can hug, squeeze and in some cases, climb over. A color-crazed environment of words in Plexiglass, Styrofoam, cloth, foam and what-have-you, ¿Being Home? reopened over the weekend on the first level of the DAM's Hamilton Building and remains on view through February 12. Museum admission is $3 to $13 (children ages five and younger are admitted free); call 720-865-5000.
And to keep up with the Froyd's-eye-view of arts and culture in Denver, "like" my fan page on Facebook.
