Daniel Libeskind "Denver Art Museum: View 1"

From: Denver Art Museum
Limited Edition: 8
Exhibition: Grand Opening: Frederic C. Hamilton Building
Material: Printed vinyl
Dimensions: 30" x 89" (76cm x 226cm)

Hanging Hardware Included

Summary

The Frederic C. Hamilton wing of the Denver Art Museum (DAM) is the first completed US building by world-famous architect Daniel Libeskind. Like any good work of art, the building has not been without controversy, receiving both rave reviews and harsh critiques. But no one can argue with the drama of the building as seen on banners from the museum's grand opening. Two versions of the banner highlight Libeskind's titanium-clad Denver Art Museum. The first banner shows an angular outcropping of the building that juts into a clear blue Colorado sky. The second version shows overlapping layers of the building with surfaces glinting in the sun and receding into the shade.

Description

Architect Daniel Libeskind's initial vision when designing the Frederic C. Hamilton wing of the Denver Art Museum was to create what he termed a "spatial dance" between two lines that fold into and upon one another without ever touching. The realization of this vision in the actual building, his first museum in the U.S., showcases the ways in which he achieved this theoretical goal in a concrete form. The overall shape of the building with its strong angular geometry defies any one definition, and the interior experience of the building can be somewhat disorienting with steep slopes, divergent angles, and tilted walls that trick the eye.

Paul Goldberger, architectural critic for The New Yorker described the Hamilton wing this way:

"The Libeskind addition is sheathed in more than nine thousand titanium panels, which are not completely flat, so that as the light bounces off them they seem to ripple gently, as if the building were covered with a thin film of liquid. Since none of the exterior walls are perpendicular to the ground and each surface slopes at a different angle, at any moment the sun strikes each of them differently, making some sections seem richly textured while others appear to have no texture at all."

These banners from the grand opening feature a striking photograph of the museum that shows the daringness of Libeskind's design against a cloudless, blue Colorado sky. The mass of the building is seen as planes of light and dark. The grayish silver of the titanium cladding approaches and recedes in the light, making the building seem almost more an abstract sculpture than a real-world structure. Text in white and lime green reads "Denver ART Museum".

The other side of the banner has a triangular silhouette in two shades of lime green with text in shades of blue and green that reads "Denver ART Museum/ARCHITECTURE".

Provenance

These banners were displayed around Denver to promote the October 7, 2006 grand opening of the Frederic C. Hamilton building designed by Daniel Libeskind. Another version of the banner was created highlighting a different image of the building.