Does The New Public Art Near Denver International Airport Look Like COVID?
DENVER (CBS4) - If you take a quick glance at the photo below you might mistake it for a slightly inaccurate take on a coronavirus germ, right?
But it's not. That's a photo of a new piece of public art that has been installed near Denver International Airport. The sculpture -- "Luminous Wind" -- is drawing some attention for its similarity to an image that has become a symbol of the hardships of 2020.
That image above is the Centers for Disease Control's illustration of the "ultrastructural morphology exhibited by" coronaviruses. It is what has caused the COVID-19 pandemic -- the spread of the respiratory illness called Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) around the world -- and the illustration has been widely seen image across the media landscape all year.
The new 27-foot-tall sculpture near DIA is located at the Peña Station NEXT light rail station at the intersection of 61st Street and Peña Boulevard. A press release from the airport shows it's certainly not a representation of COVID.
Luminous Wind is actually a tribute to Federico Peña, the city's former mayor who was mayor involved in the creation of DIA. Peña also served as U.S. Secretary of Transportation and U.S. Secretary of Energy. The art will be dedicated to him in an official ceremony next spring and it includes his quote "What we are working toward is not the Denver of tomorrow, but the Denver of decades from tomorrow," at the bottom.
Artists Laura Haddad and Tom Drugan created the sculpture. It includes rods that reflect the sun during the day and have LED lights inside that make interesting color patterns at night.