Amid the powder-filled valleys and snowcapped peaks of Colorado, this winter will be some top-class exhibitions hosted by an array of prestigious museums and cultural venues.
THEMOVE (Aspen) , 2023 Patinated Bronze. 106 x 66 x 1 in. (Photo: Daniel Perez)
The western U.S. state is characterised by a distinct and diverse geography comprising vast desert, dramatic canyons and snow-specked mountains. Such scenic landscapes have served as inspiration for many artists down the years, whose work is often on show at museums dotted throughout Colorado. But the region’s cultural scene extends beyond natural beauty, often exploring contemporary hot-button themes that impact societies. Whatever your scope of interest, here are 10 of the best exhibitions set to take place across Colorado this winter.
Lena Henke: You and your vim
The New York–based artist Lena Henke has gained critical acclaim in recent years for her works that depict everything from city maps to urban refuse to equestrian iconography. Set on the rooftop of the museum, this exhibition has as its centrepiece a huge bronze outline of a jovial woman inspired by a drawing by French illustrator Tomi Ungerer. Intended to represent an avatar of Henke herself, visitors are encouraged to rotate the sculpture while observing its form. Also featured in the exhibition are several works of oil hanging from the rooftop’s walls and windows.
Aspen Art Museum / 15 December 2024 – 6 April 2025
Hauntings in the Firehouse: Paranormal Activity at Old Station No. 1
(Photo: Denver Firefighters Museum)
“Did you hear that?” “Is someone there?” What…or who haunts the Denver Firefighters Museum? Since it was first constructed as Denver’s second fire Station No. 1 in 1909, and even more so in recent years, the building at 1326 Tremont Place in downtown Denver has attracted paranormal investigators. Maybe it’s the fact that this building housed first responders or maybe it’s the 9/11 memorial on the second floor, but lots of people have had experiences here, from investigators to museum staff. Visitors can come and explore this rotating exhibition to learn about the building and the paranormal activity said to have taken place here.
Denver Firefighters Museum, Denver / Through February 2025
Images of the West
(Photo: ProRodeo Hall of Fame and Museum of the American Cowboy)
In late October, the ProRodeo Hall of Fame will open a new exhibit in their 101 Gallery featuring the work of Carlin Kielcheski, a US Air Force officer who used his spare time to develop his painting and drawing skills, often centred around his favourite subjects of ranching and rodeo scenes. Also featured in the gallery will be the photographs of Robert “Bob” Kisken, who spent most of his life as a school math and government teacher. Kisken’s favourite hobby was photographing rodeo, ranch, and farm life. After retirement, he lived in various western towns where he spent many hours photographing those scenes. The museum is open Wednesday through Sunday from 9am to 5pm.
ProRodeo Hall of Fame and Museum of the American Cowboy, Colorado Springs / 23 October 2024 through April 2025
Movements Toward Freedom
This exhibition ruminates on the strength, potential, and vulnerability of bodily movement in modern life. Connecting physical and social definitions of how we move, it explores how the expression of our bodies serves to inform and shape society around us – often unknowingly. Through a mix of existing work and fresh commissions spanning performance, sculpture, video, painting and installation, the exhibition ponders the ways in which physical movement performs a critical role in how we exercise agency, both individually and collectively, and how it can impact on the ways we maintain and build social cohesion such as community-building, civic change and liberation, as well as providing relief from the travails of day-to-day life.
Museum of Contemporary Art Denver / Through 2 February
Elliot Ross: Geography of Hope
Installation view Elliot Ross: Geography of Hope, 2024 at Denver Botanic Gardens. (Photo: Scott Dressel-Martin)
Influenced by his many years of first-hand research, the work of Taiwanese-American photographer Elliot Ross focusses on our relationship with the land and soil beneath our feet. This photographic exhibition shines a light on one of the areas that has been at the centre of Ross’s more recent research – Glenn Canyon, a natural canyon spanning a sizeable chunk of southeastern and south-central Utah. Dammed and flooded in 1963 to create Lake Powell, the desert walls of the canyon have recently reared their heads out of the water following 20 years of drought, serving as both a chilling reminder of climate change and a testament to nature’s resilience. The photographs on display invite visitors to consider the raw beauty of this landscape as it evolves, and the high stakes of its future.
Denver Botanic Gardens / Through 2 February 2025
Wild Things: The Art of Maurice Sendak
Featuring hundreds of artworks created by prolific American author and illustrator Maurice Sendak, best known for his children’s picture books, this exhibition celebrates career that has so far spanned over six distinguished decades – and shows no signs of abating. Renowned for the beauty, quirkiness and sheer unadulterated mischief that imbues his art, the exhibition includes a vast selection of works, spanning drawings, paintings, posters, and book mockups. Works by many of the notable artists who have inspired Sendak down the years, including William Blake, Winsor McCay, Beatrix Potter, George Stubbs and Walt Disney, also appear.
Denver Art Museum / Through 17 February 2025
Dialogue and Defiance: Clyfford Still and the Abstract Expressionists
Dialogue and Defiance (Photo: Brent Andeck Photography)
In 1951, Clyfford Still, one of the founding fathers of Abstract Expressionism, removed his paintings from the Betty Parsons Gallery in New York in protest against a market that he believed showed favouritism towards fame and market value over talent. The subsequent year, he shocked observers by taking part in a group show after its curator, Dorothy Miller, agreed to display Still’s works as a composite in their own solo gallery. It was Still’s view that this would allow his work to be judged on its own terms and not in contrast to other artists. This exhibition considers the ways in which Still remained central to an artists’ community in the late 1940s and early 1950s, in spite of his vocal objections, and how his paintings promote notions of community.
Clyfford Still Museum, Denver / Through 12 January 2025
Skin: Living Armor, Evolving Identity
This special exhibition is designed to spark people’s curiosity about the uniqueness of animal skin. Featuring large numbers of specimens that demonstrate the remarkable capacity of skin to adapt depending on the conditions with which it is faced, it delves deep into the crucial role that skin continues to play in the continued evolution of animal species. Furthermore, the exhibition explores the genetic makeup of skin colour and how much more we have to learn about it, touching also on how seemingly trivial differences in pigmentation have led to the societal ill of racism.
Fort Collins Museum of Discovery / Through 26 January 2025
Prelude to War 1930s to Dec 1941
(Photo: National Museum of World War II Aviation)
Among the permanent exhibits at the National Museum of World War II Aviation is this fascinating presentation of the evolution on aviation. Dating from the start of the 20th century to the infamous Pearl Harbor attack in 1941 that propelled the hitherto neutral United States into the global conflict, the exhibition explores how burgeoning technology helped shape new military strategies and heralded a Golden Age of aviation. Highlights include photographic examples of early aircraft and how they were adapted for military use during WWI, and the urgent sprint to develop land and sea-based military aviation between World Wars.
National Museum of World War II Aviation, Colorado Springs / Permanent
Vanity & Vice: American Art Deco
Between the turn of the 1920s and the early 1930s, American women achieved great things in the quest for equality. In 1920, they won the right to vote and the subsequent decade saw them enjoying an increasing amount of autonomy, both in and out of the domestic sphere. This exhibition turns the spotlight on two distinct spaces where women’s growing independence was being demonstrated – the boudoir and the speakeasy – through the display of many of the Art Deco objects that filled these rooms, exploring how they hark back to a time of freedom and flux in the lives of women.
Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art, Denver / Through 1 June 2025
In Nature’s Studio: Two Centuries of American Landscape Painting
Featuring more than 65 paintings spanning the early 19th century through to the early 21st century, this exhibition centres on American landscape painting, with a particular focus on the advent of Impressionism and Tonalism together with Modernist trends in landscape interpretation. The paintings on display chronicle the story of American art from its naturalistic foundations to the introduction of avant-garde European movements reinterpreted within the American artistic context. Among the notable landscape artists represented in the exhibition are the likes of Thomas Birch, Frederic Church, Aaron Draper Shattuck and Paul Weber.
Loveland Museum, Loveland / Through 8 February 2025