Inside the White Cubicle: Meet the Staff of MCA Denver

Ever wondered about the hopes and dreams of the staff of MCA Denver? How long have they toiled away in their windowless basement under the museum? Where did they come from? What did they want to be when they grew up? What is their least favorite mode of transportion? What embarrassing songs did they once listen to? What do they look to in terms of an inspirational quotation? Here are their answers, part of a new, semi-recurring feature we are calling: MCA Denver: Inside the White Cubicle.

Nick Silici, Exhibitions Manager (pictured above)

Nick has worked with the museum since 2007. He was born in Fairfield, California and has lived in Denver since 1993. While growing up Nick always wanted to be a scientist but then gave up and became an artist. His least favorite mode of transportation is running. Although Nick claims to have exceptional taste in music, he did once own an album by WHAM, a fact he denied until George

Five Questions About Teen Music Night

Kamron Hazel and Bailey Luke curated the upcoming Teen Music Night at MCA Denver. Kamron is a former Teen Council (TeCo) intern who has spent the past summer working for MCA Denver’s special events and programs. Kamron went to Cherry Creek High School in Aurora and joined TeCo during his senior year. Bailey is also a former TeCo intern who attended Colorado Academy in Denver and joined TeCo during her senior year. She has worked over the summer as the technical assistant during Mixed Taste: Tag Team Lectures on Unrelated Topics.

MCA Denver: What is Teen Music Night and who can attend?

Kamron Hazel: Teen Music Night is an event this Saturday, July 10 from 6–9PM. It is an opportunity for teens to come down to MCA Denver to hear six of Denver's most promising young bands play sets on the museum's roof deck. Anyone can attend – teenagers, their parents and siblings or anyone who wants to see local talent.

Bailey Luke: People can hang out with their friends while supporting and learning about Denver's music scene. The evening is FREE for everyone under 18, thanks to the Merage Foundation Grant we received. It is 10¢ for anyone else.

Why I Love This Art – John McEnroe's Beauty Does

Why I Love This Art features museum employees, volunteers, and interns talking about art they love from the exhibitions at MCA Denver. Here Director of Programming Sarah Kate Baie writes about John McEnroe's Beauty Does, on view as part of the celebration of the 2013 Biennial of the Americas from July 17 – Sept 29, 2013.

John McEnroe uses specially formulated industrial polymers to create large scale sculptural forms. For his installation in the atrium of MCA Denver, I found him balanced twenty-five feet in the air on

You are Welcome Here

Beginning in July 2013, admission to the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver is FREE for anyone age 18 and under. We are so proud to be the first museum in Denver where children and teenagers can

The Doctor Rates Your Pain with Brett Littman

The Doctor Rates Your Pain is a new (hopefully) recurring feature in which MCA Denver Director & Chief Animator Dr. Adam Lerner interviews visiting artists and guests about hypothetical scenarios that might evoke pain. The featured guest today is Brett Littman, Executive Director of The Drawing Center in New York and curator of Guillermo Kuitca: Diarios, on view through September 15, 2013 at MCA Denver.

Guillermo Kuitca's Diarios

Guillermo Kuitca began making what he calls his Diarios in 1994. Currently on view at MCA Denver, each of these works begins as an abandoned canvas––often as the beginning of a

Looking Back at May is for Mexico

Exhibiting artist Eduardo Sarabia

At the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, May is for Mexico. Throughout the month, MCA Denver produces Huevos Revueltos, an exhibition and series of programs focusing on contemporary

Drawing Drawing

Mark Mothersblog

Mark Mothersbaugh stopped by the museum yesterday, and he and Director & Chief Animator Adam Lerner re-enacted a fight scene from Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic.

Why I Love This Art – Patti Hallock's The West is Here

Why I Love This Art features museum employees, volunteers, and interns talking about art they love from the exhibitions at MCA Denver. Here Event and Rental Manager Erin Algiere writes about Patti Hallock's exhibition The West is Here, on view through Sunday, March 3, 2013. 

I would like to admit that I frequently find myself in Patti Hallock's gallery when I am supposed to be at my desk plugging away at accounting spreadsheets. And I realize that I could have gone anywhere else in the building to get away from those spreadsheets, yet chose to be among Patti Hallock’s desert views.

Drawing Drawing

At the Patti Hallock/William Lamson/Ladies Fancywork Society opening last month, we hosted a self-portrait contest (a "drawing drawing"), and the winner we selected is above. As promised, the winner received a critique by museum curator Nora Burnett Abrams (as well as a dual/family membership to the museum).

Photos from the opening weekend of the William Lamson, Patti Hallock, and Ladies Fancywork Society exhibitions

Artist William Lamson

Watch the MCA Denver Holiday Video

Happy 2013 everyone. We had a blast in 2012 and hope you did too. 

Stay tuned for the blooper reel. 

Why I Love This Art – Christian Bök's Xenotext

Why I Love This Art features museum employees, volunteers, and interns talking about art they love from the exhibitions at MCA Denver. Here Program Producer Jesse Leaneagh writes about Christian Bök’s Protein 13, on view as part of the exhibition Postscript from October 12, 2012 – February 3, 2013.

Christian Bök’s The Xenotext is a feat of molecular biology as much as art history. The Xenotext experiment began as a lyrical poem, which Bök first translated into a DNA sequence and then implanted into an extremophile microbe, which is an organism that can live at the bottom of the ocean and in extreme temperature conditions (places where survival is impossible for most life forms). Upon receiving this DNA sequence, the microbe generated a protein in response, a model of which is currently on view in our galleries as the sculpture Protein 13 [above]. This final protein can be translated back into a poem itself, and this final poem is on view behind Bök’s sculpture in the galleries.  In Bök’s words, “The Xenotext Experiment strives to ‘infect’ the language of genetics with the ‘poetic vectors’ of its own discourse, doing so in order to extend poetry itself beyond the formal limits of the book.”  In a final pyrotechnic flourish, the initial poem and the response poem both include the word "glow," and the microbe in fact glows during the process of generating the response protein. 

The Inspirational Tale I Never Wanted to Tell

I had a conversation recently with Nina Simon, probably the leading spokesperson for museum reform in the United States, about museums and audiences. Speaking to her gave me the occasion to share with her a story that, for reasons that may be obvious below, I rarely recount publicly, though I think about often. When Nina asked me if she could use the story in her popular blog, Museum 2.0, I realized that it was about time for me to share it myself

Fiona Banner's 1066 Time-Lapse Video

During the installation of our Postscript exhibition, filmmaker Chris Bagley captured Fiona Banner and her assistants working on Banner's 1066 wall drawing via time-lapse. 1066 and the rest of Postscript: Writing After Conceptual Art are up through February 3, 2013.

Postscript Opening Photos

Photographer Richard Peterson was on hand for the October 12 opening of our exhibition Postscript: Writing After Conceptual Art. The evening included performances by Robert Fitterman, Michalis Pichler, Derek Beaulieu, Vanessa Place, and Christian Bök.

Richard Peterson Photos: Opening Party for Tercerunquinto and Continental Drift

Here's a selection of Richard Peterson's shots during the opening reception for the Continental Drift and Tercerunquinto exhibitions. The intrepid photographer can be seen on the right in the last photo of this slideshow. Both the Tercerunquinto and Continental Drift exhibitions close Saturday, September 23, 2012. New exhibitions by Adrian Ghenie and Dana Schutz open this Friday, September 21, and if you stop by Friday night there's a chance that Richard might immortalize you.  

Richard Peterson Photos: Opening Party for Frohawk Two Feathers

Photographer Richard Peterson was on-site for the Frohawk Two Feathers opening on June 13, documenting the evening in his usual unparalleled style. MCA Denver's Frohawk Two Feathers exhibition closes this Sunday, September 9. An exhibition of his newest work opens September 8 at Taylor de Cordoba gallery in Los Angeles. We'll miss you Frohawk. 

Why I Love This Art – Adam Milner's Beds

Why I Love This Art features museum employees, volunteers, and interns talking about art they love from the exhibitions at MCA Denver. Here Director of Programming Sarah Kate Baie writes about Adam Milner's Beds series, on view as part of the exhibition Continental Drift from July 13 – Sept 23, 2012.

Adam Milner takes a photo of his bed, or wherever it was he slept, every morning when he wakes up. A series of these photographs appears in the exhibition Continental Drift (on view from July 13 – September 23, 2012). The photos show sixteen of his, err, sleeping arrangements. Adam’s disheveled single bed appears in several of the photos, pushed up against the wall, bedclothes assembled with an