Tour The Denver Art Museum's New Welcome Center, Renovated Galleries
DENVER (CBS4) - The Denver Art Museum announced on Wednesday that it will open its newly unified campus featuring a Welcome Center and renovations to the Martin Building next week after completing the $150 million expansion project. CBS4 got a preview of the reimagined galleries and new experience waiting for visitors when it reopens.
"We have looked at our collection with fresh eyes," said Angelica Daneo, the chief curator and curator of European art before 1900 at the Denver Art Museum. "This is what is exciting as the objects are alive."
The Martin Building, previously known as the North or Ponti Building is 210,000 square feet with galleries on seven stories. Pieces from the museum's collections of Indigenous, European, Asian, and Latin American art will get a new layout and design each on different floors. Along with the new Sie Welcome Center, visitors will get views of the city and the mountains from a perspective in the new building they may have never experienced before at Denver's Cultural Complex. The Welcome Center is 50,000 square feet and includes two new restaurants.
"Re-envision them, reimagine them, and look at them with different perspectives," Daneo told CBS4 about the pieces from their collection. "We all hope that our visitors will come to our galleries, rediscover old treasures, but also discover new, new stories, new narratives."
The expansion also gives more room to the museum's commitment for reaching all ages with a new learning center. The new layout hopes to encourage people of more backgrounds to visit as well with bilingual signs.
"We've worked with the community to really look at these objects and provide the content from different perspectives inclusive of different points of view," she said.
Admission to the museum on Sunday, Oct. 24 will be free to the public but visitors are encouraged to reserve their ticket in advance on the DAM website: https://www.denverartmuseum.org/en.