Travel Tips & Trends

Denver Art Week

It's museum night in Denver

Based on a popular event in Paris, Denver will introduce "Night at the Museums" on November 14, 2008—a festive evening where nearly a dozen of the city's top museums will stay open late on a Friday night offering special events, music, food and fun—all for free. All of the participating museums, including the Denver Art Museum and the Denver Museum of Nature & Science (the fourth largest museum in the nation) will be open for free from 5 to 10 p.m. In addition to their regular galleries and exhibits, museums will also offer a series of special events including live music concerts, cash bars and dance performances. Free shuttle buses will run between the museums, making it possible to visit several in one evening.

The evening event is based on Nuit des Museés (Night of the Museums), an event that originated in Paris with a few museums and has now spread to more than 2,000 cultural facilities across Europe.

Participating museums are the Black American West Museum, Byers-Evans House, Children's Museum of Denver, Colorado History Museum, Denver Art Museum, Denver Museum of Nature & Science, Forney Museum of Transportation, Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art, Molly Brown House, Museo de las Americas and the Museum of Contemporary Art.

"There is something special about a museum at night," says Jayne Buck, vice president of tourism for the Denver Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau. "We want to turn our museums into the biggest ‘date night' of the year, offering people a chance to visit new museums, hear live music and experience all the culture, art and history that Denver has to offer as they hop from museum to museum, all for free."

At the Forney Museum of Transportation, historic cars and trains will be lit for this night only. Visitors will grab a lantern and stroll through the dark museum lit only by the headlamps of antique cars. The Molly Brown House will have live Irish music that Molly might have heard while sailing on the Titanic, the Children's Museum will be showing silent Old West movies and the Black American West Museum will have a scavenger hunt in the historic Five Points neighborhood.

Ballet Ariel and the Hannah Kahn Dance Company will perform in the lobby of the Denver Art Museum, while the Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art will have a jazz concert with Denver legend Charlie Burrell.

At the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, the "Polar-Palooza!" multimedia road show presents Earth's iciest, most remote regions and some of the world's cutting-edge polar scientists and explorers. See a 130,000-year-old piece of ice, try on extreme cold weather gear or learn an Alaskan Native dance.

More music is available at the Museum of Contemporary Art, while Denver artist Barbara Froula will unveil her new watercolor commissioned by the Colorado History Museum for Denver's 150th anniversary, which takes place just a week later on November 22.

For more information on Denver's Night at the Museums, go to www.VisitDenver.com. The event is the kick-off for Denver Arts Week, an annual celebration of everything cultural in the Mile High City that runs from November 14-22 this year.