Denver art museum

Imagine my surprise when I noticed that I had begun and did NOT FINISH one of my Denver adventure days....

LOVE the work of Deborah Butterfield

We went to the Denver Art Museum on Wednesday, our first full day in Colorado.  We had driven to Golden Gate Canyon Park for hiking earlier, then ate a YUMMY lunch at the Mediterranean restaurant in Golden.  So part of our master plan for the trip was to hit up the art museum and so after consulting map lady off we went.  

We were able to navigate through the city and found the parking garage for the art complex.  A very handy place to park and turned out to be a stroke of excellent luck.  

Photo taken from an upper floor of the museum (notice the gathering clouds)

The Denver Art Museum is housed in a very interesting building, I definitely enjoyed the architecture and the various sculptures that were on the grounds.  Inside, there was a great collection and I LOVED the Miro exhibition!! 

I took a bunch of random photos of things that caught my eye!

Monet- a sentimental favorite

The beginnings of Cubism...

This installation was so amazing to walk through!  An alternate reality?  A fantasy?  Lol, I loved being in that brilliant red and the grey foxes were in suspended animation.  The action and snapshot reality made it so enjoyable to experience.

This piece was my favorite of the day.  It was so compelling- I looked at it for at least 15 minutes.  I loved seeing a modern take on a classic Romantic painting.  And the black and white definitely caught my eye....  I just kept searching the picture for something- I am not sure what.  So much I could talk about here- the angel in the center that is the lightest, the repetition of shape, the  use of contrast  and value and form.....  I also like the relatively large size of the painting- so easy to immerse yourself in the tumble of items that lead your eye through the composition.

I am glad I had a nice text discussion about it, even if the Mad-English teacher was no where to be found at that moment.  I did direct him to the piece so he could see it for himself.  :)

The art was just so good- a very nice museum indeed.

In other news, our original plan was to roam around downtown Denver for the evening.  Just as we were getting ready to leave as the museum was closing, the storm clouds rolled in.  We went outside to notice the rain starting and we found a very nice museum security person, who directed us to Mad Beans..... when we walked out the heavens opened up, or the bottom fell out, or any other rain metaphor  you want to use,  and the same very nice man lead us up into the museum and told us how to get to the back door where we scampered across the road to the coffee shop.  We sat there and enjoyed a beverage while watching the rain, then hail and then even more rain come down...  and SUDDENLY both of our phones alerted us to a tornado warning!  Fortunately for us, the tornado was in the southern part of the city.  And like previously mentioned- our rental was safely tucked in the parking garage during the hail!

Just to add to the excitement, there was a flash flood warning on our phones about a half hour later.   Sadly this was bike to work day in Denver- I wonder how many people were caught in that little situation.  We eventually got out of the coffee shop and went on down to a little bakery/cafe where we had pastry for dinner (life was good), but the rain was not our friend that night.  So we hustled on back to the car and headed for Golden.  We attempted to get another walk/hike in, and that did not end well- well, it did not end in a dry manner.

In my usual way, I had some very interesting discussions about all sorts of things in the coffee shop with people I didn't know.  So much fun to travel.  I did have interesting discussions with the person I do know, as well, don't get me wrong.  We had a really great time comparing notes about the art work.  And we, of course, began planning our next adventure.

I have gotten a lot of joy out of reliving my trip this evening.  I hope you may have as well.