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

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.

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.

Ouija Interview with Clyfford Still

Our first Ouija interview, with Andy Warhol, met with moderate success (or at least coherence), so Alex and I thought we'd try to interview another dead artist: Clyfford Still. MCA Denver is headed to the Clyfford Still Museum tonight for Art Fitness Training, so it seemed like the right time. 

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.

Andy Warhol Ouija Board Interview

We wanted to interview Andy Warhol since he’s included in the upcoming MCA Denver exhibition Postscript: Writing After Conceptual Art, and we had an idea. Why not try to channel him through a Ouija board? Program Producer Jesse Leaneagh came up with the questions as someone mildly familiar with Mr. Warhol, and Creative and Production Manager Alex Stephens and Audio Engineer Josh Novak rested their hands on the Ouija pointer also. None of us Ouija-ing were Warhol experts. To contact Andy, we repeated his name three times. By the time our interview was over we had unexpectedly brushed up on art history, crackpot methods or not, and gained a weird new respect for the man himself.

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.  

MCA Denver Instagram Pic[k]s

MCA Denver is finally on Instagram! Here's Jesse (Program Producer extraordinaire) wading in taxidermy forms at the Jonas Brothers Taxidermy Studio. All for the sake of the September 21 opening: Adrian Ghenie and Dana Schutz. Follow MCA Denver on Instagram @mcadenver1485.

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