New Welcome Center adds to Denver Art Museum’s artful buildings

All three buildings on the Denver Art Museum campus: from left, a point of the Hamilton Building, the new Welcome Center, and the Gio Ponti-designed Martin Building at right.

My feature and my photography published by Art & Object spotlights the three architectural gems of Denver Art Museum. Read my article at this link with no paywall. I interviewed the DAM’s director, Christoph Heinrich, prior to the DAM’s recent reopening of the $175 million upgrade. Part of the project was the sprucing up of the DAM’s 50-year-old building designed by Gio Ponti. The project also introduced a sparkling new Welcome Center. The Welcome Center features curved glass windows nearly 40′ tall, a new application used for the first time in the building.

Downtown Denver as seen through one of Gio Ponti’s unusually shaped windows.

One of the best aspects of the upgrade is the opening of the Martin Building’s rooftop terraces with fresh air and fresh views of the city and, in the distance, Colorado’s Front Range of the Rocky Mountains.

The Civic Center Park amphitheater and the Colorado State Capitol as seen from the rooftop terrace of the DAM’s Martin Building.

On a mid-October day under Denver’s bluebird skies, flags fly atop the Gio Ponti-designed building that needed to fit on an unusual, triangular piece of real estate.

Photos by Colleen Smith