Untitled Creative Fusions At The Renovated DAM

I attended Untitled Creative Fusions, held quarterly at the Denver Art Museum (the DAM), last night. It was fine as far as it went, but I still miss the good old days, when the event was called Untitled Final Fridays, and took place on the last Friday night of every month, complete with a free buffet table. Back then, the evening was much lighter in tone, and around Halloween, there were people dressed up in costumes, museum employees telling ghost stories, and humorous tours of the collections. Also, every month there would be a performance by two comedians from the Curious Theater, pretending to be Joan and Charlie, the subjects of one of the museum's more well known paintings. These days, the themes are much more serious in tone. The title of this month's Untitled Creative Fusions was The Spirit Survives. In the photograph on the left are Felix Ayodele and Steve Jones performing the welcoming celebration in the new visitors center, with images by Alejandra Abad.

Later on, there was a performance of "I Will Survive" by the Playground Ensemble, which the program describes as "expressing triumph over heartbreak and the will of the spirit's capacity to restore itself through the gift of expression." They can be seen performing the song in a classical style in the photograph on the right. There was also a tour of the Latin American Galleries by a local comedian, and so I was expecting to get a few laughs out of it. However, the presentation was done in a more or less conventional manner, without a hint of humor. It is sad that these evenings can't go back to being more lighthearted and fun. Is there no more time to just kick back and enjoy yourself? Am I becoming more of an old curmudgeon than ever?

I spent most of the time in the newly renovated Martin (the North) Building, but decided to head to the lobby of the Hamilton Building to see if there was a free buffet table there, since the museum now has two restaurants up and running again. However, the visitors center is where the buffet table used to be located before the North Building closed, and I didn't see so much as a single cheese square there. And so I was not optimistic. On my way across the bridge over the street to the other building, there was a very colorful art piece, as seen in the photograph on the left. I am not sure what it is, or what it is suppposed to represent, but it was indeed pretty. 

Once I reached the first floor of the Hamilton Building, my worst fears were confirmed. There was a cash bar (which was not doing a brisk business), but no free buffet table. I am not sure why. The whole reason it was eliminated in the first place three years ago was because the North Building was closed, and there were no longer any kitchens to provide the hors d'oeuvres. Did the museum blow it's entire budget on the remodel, and can't afford to provide a buffet to museum patrons one night every 3 months? Evidently so. And I couldn't help but notice that the stairwell in the newly renovated Martin Building is the same shabby one as before. Perhaps we should set up a Go Fund Me page for the museum to take care of these issues. I'll get right on that.