Must-See Art & Museum Exhibitions

Discover why The Mile High City is the place to be when it comes to incredible arts and culture. You'll see blockbuster museum exhibitions on a rotating basis at world-class cultural institutions. For people with disabilities and their caregivers, see the accessibility information.

Museum Updates | Blockbuster Exhibitions | This Month | IMAX & Planetarium |
Long-Term Exhibitions | Coming Soon

Museum Updates

Denver's arts scene is shining brighter than ever with some key openings and reopenings. Denver Art Museum recently celebrated the reopening of the Martin Building (formerly known as the North Building). First opened in 1971, the building was designed by Italian architect Gio Ponti and Denver-based James Sudler Associates. The building has been fully renovated with expanded gallery space, plus stunning views of the city skyline and Rocky Mountains. The building showcases Asian art, Indigenous arts of North America, Northwest Coast and Alaska Native, European and American art before 1900, Latin American and art of the ancient Americas, photography, textile art and fashion, and Western American art collections.

And for a truly unforgettable experience for all ages, check out Meow Wolf Denver's Convergence Station, the Santa Fe, New Mexico-based arts and entertainment company’s new permanent installation. Discover immersive, mind-bending art across the four alien worlds of C Street, Eemia, Ossuary and Numina. Uncover the secrets within. Inside the bustling multiverse transit station known as Convergence Station lies HELLOFOOD, an oasis of combined culinary cultures serving QDOT for 2,500 years and counting! Here, visitors can recharge from their cosmic exploration, and find sustenance in tasty treats and bold brews from local vendors.

Blockbuster Exhibitions

Costa Rica: Long Live Peace and Labor

WHEN: Thru January 28, 2024
WHERE: Museo de las Americas
When you think of Costa Rica, do you think of the country’s biodiversity and anti-militarist culture? What you may not know is that beneath the surface, contrasting realities intertwine. Beyond its idyllic image, Costa Rica represents a fresh societal landscape, giving rise to new social groups that voice their opinions and question prevailing national political choices. With this exhibition, the country's rich cultural heritage comes to life as a seamless blend of ancient artifacts and contemporary art illuminates both the country’s intriguing past and vibrant present.

Cowboy

WHEN: Thru Feb. 18, 2024
WHERE: MCA DENVER — Museum of Contemporary Art Denver
Cowboy speaks to the museum’s ambition to challenge, revise and reconceive how such a myth originated and might be probed in exciting, courageous and nuanced ways. It brings together loans and new commissions from 27 artists representing a wide range of perspectives, including Asian American, Latinx and Native American/Indigenous.

Golden Legacy: Original Art from 80 Years of Golden Books

WHEN: Thru Feb. 18, 2024
WHERE: Denver Botanic Gardens
Whimsical children’s book illustrations highlight animals and nature as a source of love, wonder and joy. Featuring more than 30 framed illustrations from the Little Golden Books series, vintage books and a reading nook, Golden Legacy showcases works from some of the best-known children’s books of the past 80 years, including The Poky Little Puppy, illustrated by Gustaf Tenggren, and Chicken Little, illustrated by Richard Scarry.

Amoako Boafo: Soul of Black Folks

WHEN: Thru Feb. 19, 2024
WHERE: Denver Art Museum
This is the debut solo exhibition for Ghanaian artist Amoako Boafo. It features more than 30 works the artist created between 2016 and 2022 that tells stories about the beauty and complexity of Black life.

All Stars: American Artists from The Phillips Collection

WHEN: Thru March 3, 2024
WHERE: Denver Art Museum
The Phillips Collection showcases some of the best American art from one of the most celebrated collections in the United States. See landmark works by more than 50 artists, including Jackson Pollock, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jacob Lawrence, Childe Hassam and more!

Wild Color

WHEN: Thru April 7, 2024
WHERE: Denver Museum of Nature & Science
Delve into the color spectrum like never before as you make your way through immersive rooms, each representing a color of the rainbow. Discover some of the brightest and boldest examples from the museum’s collections—alongside experiences
designed to awaken your senses. Anywhere you look in nature, color holds meaning. It evokes emotion, signals alarm, and creates disguise and illusion. In this special exhibition, you’ll learn how to decode the hidden messages that different colors can send. Then, explore some of nature’s mysteries that are hidden in plain sight.

Revolt 1680/2180: Runners + Gliders

WHEN: Thru May 2024
WHERE: History Colorado Center
Transport yourself to the year 2180 at History Colorado Center's new multi-sensory exhibition. Created in partnership with world-renowned artist Virgil Ortiz, a visionary hailing from Cochiti Pueblo, this unprecedented experience brings Indigenous Futurism to The Mile High City through a combination of history, science fiction, art, fashion and fantasy.

Spotlight: Inside Collections Care and Conservation

WHEN: Thru May 5, 2024
WHERE: Clyfford Still Museum
This unique exhibition highlights how the Clyfford Still Museum stewards and preserves its collections for future generations through careful display; scientific and historical research; and art conservation. The show is organized chronologically, providing visitors with a thorough overview of Clyfford Still’s 60-year career and includes never-before-seen works.

This Month

Mysteries of the Ice Ages

WHEN: Thru Jan. 21, 2024
WHERE: Denver Museum of Nature & Science (DMNS)
Embark on a journey through Earth's icy history and discover the fascinating stories and mysteries of ice and adaptation through hundreds of artifacts and fossils, models and interactive experiences. See authentic tools and artifacts, some never before exhibited, used by Neanderthals, early humans and Arctic peoples. Get ready to discover lands lost long ago under the world’s oceans. Come hang out with animals adapted for cold — some long extinct, others still alive today — from wooly mammoths to American lions and learn about the important role that ice has played in Earth’s history.

Mi Gente: Manifestations of Community in the Southwest

WHEN: Thru Feb. 3, 2024
WHERE: Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Colorado Springs
Community can be defined as a group of people who have shared characteristics or inhabit the same space. Drawing from works in the collection stewarded by the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Mi Gente: Manifestations of Community in the Southwest considers community within a landscape that has been shaped by colonization and migration. Focusing primarily on works by Chicanx/a/o, Hispanic, and Mexican-American artists based in New Mexico and Colorado, Mi Gente considers the politics and complexities of community, including those who are perceived as outsiders. 

Personal Geographies: Trent Davis Bailey ǀ Brian Adams

WHEN: Thru Feb. 11, 2024
WHERE: Denver Art Museum
This exhibition presents a selection of images by two artists who seek to understand themselves and the places they treasure though photography. Colorado photographer Trent Davis Bailey reflects on his personal history and the relationship between images and memory. Personal Geographies presents work from his series The North Fork, which draws inspiration from childhood memories, small-scale family farms and the landscape of western Colorado. Anchorage-based Iñupiaq photographer Brian Adams has traveled across Alaska and beyond to make pictures that celebrate the Arctic landscape and sensitively share the stories, cultures and perspectives of Inuit people and communities.

The Tropical Paintings of Manabu Saito

WHEN: Thru Feb. 11, 2024
WHERE: Denver Botanic Gardens
Experience Manabu Saito’s passion for botanical art in this exhibition of watercolor paintings of tropical flora. For more than 60 years, Saito painted flowers and plants from his native Japan and from travels throughout the United States, the Caribbean, and Central and South America. Mostly created at the Wilson Botanical Garden in Costa Rica, the paintings in this exhibit highlight Saito’s love for the striking beauty of tropical plants.

ReMix

WHEN: Jan. 19–Feb. 11, 2024
WHERE: NKollectiv
Kollectiv regularly features a delightful selection of styles and techniques. ReMix features work by guest artist SA Bennett alongside member artists Kelly Austin-Rolo, Rita Bhasin, Craig Demmon, Naomi Gagnon, Steve Girard Nicole Korbe, Krista Lavonas, Michele Messenger, Carolyn Miller, Jerry Severns and Carol Till. SA Bennett is primarily a figurative painter whose work celebrates the African diaspora. As a bi-racial artist originally from Jamaica, she is influenced and inspired by the African evolution into various cultures over hundreds of years. She enjoys the vibrancy and forgiveness of painting with acrylic but in her recent works has been exploring ink resist, cold-wax and oil techniques, finding they each have a magic of their own.

Unreal Garden

WHEN: Thru Feb. 24, 2024
WHERE: Verse Denver- Southwest Plaza Mall, Littleton
Unreal Garden is a fully immersive holographic experience divided into multiple acts. Visitors explore surreal landscapes, interact with a variety of animals, and complete puzzles and challenges. The interactive elements and unique behaviors of the mythical animals make it unlike any other immersive experience. It's an unforgettable journey that challenges the mind and stimulates the senses. Be the first to tell your friends about the future of storytelling with cutting-edge holographic headsets also used by NASA!

Celebrating 10 Years of Drop-in Drawing

WHEN: Thru Feb. 29, 2024
WHERE: Denver Art Museum
Over the years, Drop-in Drawing has attracted regulars who have become more than just participants of a casual drawing lesson. Alongside instructor Anna Kaye, they have become a group that supports one another through the exchange of ideas and positive feedback. Celebrating 10 Years of Drop-in Drawing commemorates these artists and their stories of connection to the artworks on view at the DAM.

Tanya Marcuse: Laws of Nature

WHEN: Thru March 31, 2024
WHERE: Denver Botanic Gardens
Tanya Marcuse’s large-scale photographs evoke awe and wonder for the natural world. Interspersing flowers, fruits, plants and animals at different stages of life, her artworks resemble incredibly detailed still lifes up close, while from afar, they appear like abstract paintings. In an intensive process that often lasts months, Marcuse collects flora and fauna from her surrounding environment and composes and photographs them in intricate tableaux. Marcuse’s works hover between beauty and destruction, landscape and still life, and fact and fiction, inviting viewers to reflect on the laws of nature.

The Skeletal World of José Guadalupe Posada

WHEN: Thru May 12, 2024
WHERE: Denver Art Museum
This exhibition presents the work of the iconic 19th-century Mexican artist and lithographer whose illustrations of skeletal figures known as calaveras and catrinas have become an essential part of Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) celebrations. Featuring a select set of Posada’s prints, including many of his most famous calaveras, Skeletal World also includes art that showcases his enduring legacy.

Islands Beyond Blue

WHEN: Thru May 14, 2024
WHERE: Denver Art Museum
This presentation showcases the work of Niki Hastings-McFall, a celebrated contemporary artist of Sāmoan and Pākehā descent who has been credited with shepherding contemporary Pacific art onto an international stage. Known for her large-scale and immersive "lei bombing" installations, she used hundreds of synthetic lei to create the installation. Her work is presented in dialogue with approximately 25 treasures from the DAM's collection that illustrate regional historic arts alongside new innovations. This inaugural exhibition aims to dispel romantic notions of the Pacific Islands as a tourist’s paradise through a nuanced exploration of the area’s vibrant cultural landscape. 

Good Vibrations

WHEN: Thru June 14, 2024
WHERE: Museum of Outdoor Arts, Greenwood Village
Nine emerging artist interns came together over the summer through MOA's annual Design and Build Summer Internship Program to collaboratively create several unique, site-specific installations for Marjorie Park.

Gio Ponti: Designer of a Thousand Talents

WHEN: Thru July 19, 2024
WHERE: Denver Art Museum
Gio Ponti was one of the most inventive Italian architects and designers of his time. For more than 60 years, Ponti’s exuberant approach found expression in public and private commissions from buildings, interiors and furniture to glass, ceramics and flatware, influencing international design for more than 50 years. 

Film & Planetarium

'Everest 2D'

WHEN: Thru March 20, 2024
WHERE: Denver Museum of Nature & Science
Narrated by internationally acclaimed actor Liam Neeson, "Everest" is the story of the world’s tallest mountain. Follow the thrilling expedition of four climbers on their journey to the summit of Everest, just days after the 1996 tragedy in which eight climbers lost their lives in a deadly storm.

Jane Goodall’s 'Reasons for Hope'

WHEN: Thru June 4, 2024
WHERE: Denver Museum of Nature & Science
Discover the extraordinary power of hope with "Reasons for Hope," a captivating giant-screen film inspired by the remarkable life and philosophy of Dr. Jane Goodall. Through inspiring stories and breathtaking visuals, this film instills a renewed sense of optimism and empowers audiences to become catalysts for positive change in our world.

'Secrets of the Sea 3D'

WHEN: Thru June 4, 2024
WHERE: Denver Museum of Nature & Science
Dive into the fascinating ocean world in "Secrets of the Sea." This film takes you on an underwater journey with an incredible variety of enchanting marine creatures, from pygmy seahorses and dazzling opalescent squid to majestic manta rays, tiger sharks and even a clever coconut octopus. This extraordinary film showcases the indispensable role of marine biodiversity in maintaining the well-being of our oceans. Filmed in 16 stunning locations, including Tahiti, Mexico, the Philippines and California.

Long-Term & Permanent Exhibitions

Mile High Magic

WHERE: History Colorado Center
Focusing on the history of the Denver Broncos, this exhibition uses game-worn memorabilia from more than 60 years of Broncos history to explore fairytale seasons, epic comebacks, legendary players, and the heated rivalries of Colorado’s only National Football League franchise.

Revealed: John Fielder’s Favorite Place

WHERE: History Colorado Center
John Fielder has captured breathtaking vistas, documented the changing environment, and created the definitive visual record of nearly every square mile of Colorado. But one location stands above the rest of the 104,000 square miles he visited during his 50 years as a nature photographer. Curated in collaboration with John himself, this exhibition takes you to a location that few have ever experienced, a location John feels is the most sublime in all of the Centennial State!

The Sand Creek Massacre: The Betrayal that Changed Cheyenne and Arapaho People Forever

WHERE: History Colorado Center
The Sand Creek Massacre was the deadliest day in Colorado’s history, and it changed the Cheyenne and Arapaho people forever. At sunrise on November 29, 1864, the U.S. Army attacked a camp of mostly women, children and elders on Big Sandy Creek in southeastern Colorado. The soldiers murdered more than 230 peaceful people. This exhibition tells the history of that betrayal from the perspectives of Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribal representatives, drawn from oral histories passed down for generations. Cheyenne and Arapaho people continue living with the unresolved trauma the massacre left behind. For many Cheyenne and Arapaho people, the Sand Creek Massacre isn’t just history, it’s family history.

Mud Futures with Ronald Rael

WHERE: History Colorado Center
In Mud Futures, award-winning artist and professor of Architecture at UC Berkeley, Ronald Rael uses modern-day innovation to reimagine the 7,000-year-old adobe technology. Rael 3-D printed objects out of more than 10,000 lbs. of clay, straw and sand on the front porch of the History Colorado Center in downtown Denver. This adobe printing demonstration taps into Rael’s roots in Colorado’s Conejos County and challenges the viewer to think differently about materials, space and borders, while also showing how ancient technologies might be adapted to solve current building challenges and provide answers for our future.

Space Command

WHERE: Denver Art Museum
Created by Colorado artist Chris Bagley, Space Command is an immersive installation with a whimsical approach to the atomic age. Visitors are invited to probe the boundless mysteries of space by wandering and immersing their senses through sight, sound and touch as they take in the wonders of “cosmic” debris—both familiar and foreign. The installation repurposes vintage scientific equipment, Mylar and other space-age materials to create an interactive environment with emanating light, pulsing sound, and rotating objects. Visitors are encouraged to investigate its many layers and experience the optical illusions. In this altered reality, challenge your perceptions of the real and the unknown, spark your imagination and consider limitless possibilities yet to be explored.

The 19th Century in European and American Art

WHERE: Denver Art Museum
This exhibition features mostly French paintings and, in particular, landscapes. This is not accidental, as Paris became the art center of Europe during the 1800s, and landscape, once considered among the least prestigious genres in painting for its lack of moral content, flourished as one of the most expressive and collected subjects.

The Russells in Denver, 1921

WHERE: Denver Art Museum
The Russells in Denver, 1921 presents 18 works by Charles M. Russell, highlighting paintings and sculptures displayed at his solo art show at The Brown Palace Hotel in 1921, organized by his wife Nancy Russell. By the 1920s, Charles had painstakingly devoted almost three decades of his life to painting "the West that has passed," chronicling the vast landscapes, mountain ranges and people he observed as a young man working in Montana in the 1880s.

Arts of Africa Gallery

WHERE: Denver Art Museum
The Arts of Africa gallery showcases highlights from the museum’s collection, which encompasses about 800 objects, largely from the 19th and 20th centuries, across media—including painting, printmaking, sculpture, textiles and jewelry, as well as recent acquisitions of contemporary art. The updated presentation, spanning 2,300 square feet on level 4 of the Hamilton Building, centers a collection that illustrates the diversity, relevance, and dynamism of creativity and culture across Africa. The gallery presents an expansive and inclusive view of the arts from the African continent with works from the sub-Sahara, Egypt and North Africa organized around three anchoring themes: the self, power and transformation, and manifestation.

Arts of Asia Galleries

WHERE: Denver Art Museum
The Asian art collection encompasses rare and important artworks from East Asia (China, Korea and Japan), South and Southeast Asia, and Central and West Asia. Its holdings of some 7,000 objects span nearly six millennia, from prehistoric to contemporary art. The collection boasts strengths in Chinese textiles from the Qing dynasty, South and Southeast Asian sculpture, ceramics from across the region, East Asian bamboo art, Japanese Edo period painting and twentieth-century prints. The reimagined galleries showcase a breathtaking display of over 800 artworks collectively tracing visible and invisible links across time and space in the arts of Asia.

Arts of the Ancient Americas Galleries

WHERE: Denver Art Museum
The breadth of these collections, among the most comprehensive in the United States, encompass more than 1,000 rare works that present the expansive history of artistic creation in Latin America over 3,500 years of art and culture, revealing trends, relationships and discontinuities between art created in the region. This reinstallation focuses on three major geographic zones: Mesoamerica, Central America and the Andes. While the collection primarily focuses on objects produced prior to the arrival of Europeans, the gallery incorporates several contemporary works that engage with ancient practices and materials, highlighting connections between past and present.

European Art before 1800 Galleries

WHERE: Denver Art Museum
The Davis W. Moore Galleries dedicate nearly 7,000 square feet to European Art before 1800, featuring approximately 65 works drawn from the museum’s collection of European art to present a chronological history through major themes. The installation traces the development of stylistic themes as they evolved over time, from the golden surfaces of Christian altarpieces of the 1300s and 1400s, to the grand and dramatic portraits of the 1600s, and the ideal landscapes of the late 1700s. The new gallery presentation is enhanced by the inclusion of select works from the Berger Collection, a group of notable British artworks gifted to the museum in 2018 by the Berger Collection Educational Trust.

Modern and Contemporary Art Galleries

WHERE: Denver Art Museum
Encompassing 16,000 square feet across two floors, the newly installed Modern and Contemporary Art galleries feature selections from the museum’s collection of approximately 8,000 artworks made between 1900 and today, as well as from collecting areas in African arts, Indigenous arts of North America, Latin American art, photography and textile art and fashion. Showcasing artists from around the globe, the reinstall looks anew at the work of historically recognized figures, established contemporary artists and important emerging voices. Organized by theme rather than chronology, the reinstallation acknowledges and transcends art historical movements, showcasing visual connections and common interests.

Northwest Coast and Alaska Native Art Galleries

WHERE: Denver Art Museum
The Northwest Coast and Alaska Native arts collection is on view in a reimagined, immersive gallery space that showcases works by Indigenous artists from the western coastal region of North America, stretching from Puget Sound to southeastern Alaska. Featuring more than 80 objects, the gallery presents a range of artists and creative histories from the region, emphasizing individual artists as creators while also tracing the ongoing continuum and dynamic innovation of Indigenous artists into the present day. Expanding upon this approach, visitors have the opportunity to explore several spaces that highlight the communities and places that ground artists and their practices.

Abstract Expressions: Terrace Installation

WHERE: Clyfford Still Museum
Abstract Expressions is a sound and garden installation envisioned by composer and artist Nathan Hall in collaboration with Kevin Philip Williams, assistant curator and horticulturist at Denver Botanic Gardens. This multi-year collaboration between CSM and its communities seeks to honor the prairies of Still’s life and provide a fundamental connection with Denver by creating an interdisciplinary sense of place. When visitors step out onto the terraces, their presence will cue Hall’s original sound compositions. The works’ ephemeral and immersive nature inspires visitor meditation and encourages a deeper connection to the artworks found within the galleries.

Vision and Resolve

WHERE: Center for Colorado Women's History
This exhibition illuminates how women and their social movements have impacted Colorado’s History. Focusing on suffragist Ida Clark DePriest, gay rights activist Mary Lopez Dussart, disability rights activist Laura Hershey, civic activist Anne Evans and the women leaders of Casa Verde Mothers of Pueblo, this exhibition allows visitors to experience their stories along with artifacts from the History Colorado Collection. Highlights include Equal Rights Amendment protest wear from the late 1970s and “Western Women Wild with Joy,” a newly acquired contemporary sculpture celebrating suffrage.

One Fell Swoop by Patrick Dougherty

WHERE: Denver Botanic Gardens at Chatfield Farms
This site-specific sculpture was created over the course of three weeks with the help of staff and volunteers. Willow saplings and branches used in the installation were harvested from Colorado locations, including Chatfield Farms. Visitors may view and move through the work in a grassy clearing near the Earl J. Sinnamon Center and the Deer Creek Stables.

Buffalo Soldiers: reVision

WHERE: Fort Garland Museum, Ft. Garland
This unique exhibit at the intersection of history, place and art examines the complex legacy of the Buffalo Soldiers in the American West, tracing their history from slavery to service and highlighting the relations between ethnic, gender and racial identities in the landscape of the southern Colorado borderlands. The exhibit features the work of eight artists from across the United States, including Chip Thomas (lead artist), Esther Belin, Mahogany L. Browne, Rosie Carter, Gaia, André Leon Gray, Theodore Harris and Tom Judd.

Coming Soon

Clarence Shivers: Experimenting with Form

WHEN: Feb. 2–July 6, 2024
WHERE: Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College, Colorado Springs
Over the course of his career, Clarence Shivers demonstrated a commitment to artistic experimentation, working across different media—both two- and three-dimensional—and cultivating a range of stylistic approaches. A Tuskegee Airman—and career military person—one of Shivers’ most celebrated works is his statue dedicated to these pilots and their legacies, located at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Shivers often returned to forms of portraiture, whether images of friends, families, musicians, civil rights leaders or others, and he represented his subjects with poignant and expressive insight. Shivers also created abstract works that demonstrate his ongoing exploration into geometric form, color and movement. This exhibition presents more than 30 works, paintings, prints and sculptures that offer an expansive view of the artist’s prolific career.

Masks of Africa: Classic and Contemporary

WHEN: Feb. 4–April 28, 2024
WHERE: McNichols Civic Center Building, Denver Arts & Venues
Featuring a selection of African masks from Bruce Heitler's vast collection, this exhibition showcases 30 masks from several indigenous African groups. Some of the masks on display are more than a century old. The pieces highlight the varied artistic styles culturally specific to each group of African indigenous peoples.