The Denver Art Museum, or DAM, is becoming the arts Mecca between the coasts. This incredible museum is gaining new found notoriety with its recent expansion. The already architecturally pleasing building has taken on a new life of sharp angles and reflective surfaces, it's as though Frank Gehery's cousin has taken over downtown Denver. Gio Ponti, Italian designer, dreamed up the 28-sided, two-towered building in collaboration with James Sudler Associates of Denver. The new building has seven floors of gallery space, stacked vertically to enable visitors and connected by an elevator. The exterior is covered with more than one million faceted, shimmering gray tiles that capture the sun refracting it at all angles, making the building hard to miss.
The museum is open Tuesday through Friday 10am to 5pm with an extended closure time of 9pm on Wednesdays and Saturday from 12pm to 5pm. The Cultural Complex Garage at 13th Avenue and Broadway is the most convenient place to park. It is open daily from 6am to 10pm. The garage charged roughly a dollar an hour. The DAM was founded in 1893 and its collection houses more than 600,000 works of art. The collection ranges from American Indian art, Pre-Columbian, Asian, textile, modern, and design. The expansion is planned to be open to the public in Fall of this year...we are anxiously awaiting it!