DENVER, COLORADO.- The Denver Art Museum announced its enlarged campus will open to the public on October 7, 2006. The Museum, founded in 1893 and now the largest art museum between Chicago and the West Coast, nearly doubles its facilities with the addition of the Frederic C. Hamilton Building. Adding close to 40,000 square feet of new galleries for its permanent collections, three special exhibition spaces, art storage and public amenities, it is one of the most unique structures in the United States and the first in the country completed by architect Daniel Libeskind. The $90.5 million expansion is the Museum’s first major addition since its existing North Building, designed by Italian architect Gio Ponti, was completed 35 years ago.

“The Hamilton Building creates much-needed space to exhibit our extensive and diverse collection and traveling exhibitions. With a breadth that includes American Indian, Spanish Colonial, pre-Columbian, Asian, Oceanic, African, western American and modern and contemporary art,” said director Lewis Sharp, “our holdings reflect our city and region—and provide invaluable ways for the community to learn about cultures from around the world. Libeskind’s dramatic design captures the energy and optimism of Denver and sets a new standard for civic architecture in the Rocky Mountain region and beyond.

“It has been gratifying over the years to be recognized for our pioneering education programs,” added Sharp. “We have a deep commitment to how our visitors—of all ages— see and engage in our buildings and our collection. The expansion allows us to enhance both access to works of art and the related enrichment programs we offer.”

A Bold Tradition - In 1971 the Museum opened the 28-sided, two-towered North Building by Ponti in collaboration with James Sudler Associates of Denver. Over one million faceted, shimmering gray tiles, developed by Dow Corning, provide cladding for the radical seven-story structure. This architectural icon remains the only completed project in the United States by this important Italian master of modern design.

This bold tradition continues with the new 146,000-square-foot Frederic C. Hamilton Building, a joint venture of Daniel Libeskind and Denver-based Davis Partnership Architects, situated directly south of the North Building. Libeskind’s design, referential to the original building, recalls not only the mountain peaks that provide a powerful backdrop for this spirited city, but the intricate and geometric rock crystals found in the foothills of the Rockies. A sharply cantilevered section of the Hamilton Building juts across the street towards the North Building above an enclosed steel-and-glass bridge that links the two structures. The entire Museum complex will total more than 350,000 square feet and together serve as an architectural landmark for the city of Denver and the surrounding region.

Located at the southern end of Denver’s downtown core, directly across from the city’s civic park, the Museum is adjacent to the Denver Central Library, with its 1995 expansion by Michael Graves. The Denver Art Museum’s current project has been a catalyst for larger development in the neighborhood including two residential buildings, a public parking facility and an ambitious landscape plan, also designed by Libeskind. The result is more than a block and a half of reconstruction that provides a vital link between the downtown center and the neighborhoods to the south.

“The Hamilton Building is redefining architecture in Denver and has propelled renewed cultural vitality in our city,” said Mayor John Hickenlooper. “The partnership between public and private entities to redevelop an entire block and a half of downtown based on the Museum expansion shows Denver’s great entrepreneurial spirit.”

Community-Supported Innovation and Growth - The enthusiastic community support for the Denver Art Museum’s growth reflects the exceptional civic spirit that embraces and supports innovation and creativity. The expansion followed years of record-setting attendance and membership growth at the Museum, demonstrating the Rocky Mountain region’s increasing appetite for more dynamic and enriching cultural experiences. The expansion is funded by a $62.5-million bond approved by Denver voters in 1999 and a $28-million capital campaign completed in 2005. Museum trustees have pledged more than $60 million towards the endowment. The broad-based support is emblematic of the community’s strong commitment to arts and culture. An example of this commitment is the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District (SCFD), a sales tax created in 1988 and approved twice since. Now generating nearly $40 million annually in direct support for the arts, SCFD helps to fund more than 300 cultural organizations in the Denver metro area.

In summer 2000, Daniel Libeskind was selected as lead architect for the project through a public process that included a presentation of his work attended by more than 800 community members. He formed a joint venture with Denver-based Davis Partnership Architects in fall 2000 to complete the design for the Hamilton Building. Libeskind and Davis Partnership also were commissioned to design a 1,000-car parking structure wrapped by a privately developed residential and retail space adjacent to the Museum and a full landscape plan for the surrounding site.

“The amazing vitality and growth of Denver from its founding to the present inspires the form of the new Museum,” said Libeskind. “The daring and forward-looking engagement of the public in forging its own cultural, urban and spirited destiny is apparent as soon as one touches down on the soil of Colorado.”

Libeskind’s architecture is an ideal match for the Museum’s view that the environment for art should be as dynamic as the art itself. The Museum charged Libeskind to create a striking, dramatic form that embodied unique spaces to house its programs. The Museum’s designers, curators and educators then transformed the spaces into defined galleries to accommodate the particular needs of the varied collections. Libeskind collaborated with Museum staff, particularly director of design Dan Kohl, to address these requirements, which included centralized circulation, simplified art transport and flexible special exhibition spaces. Kohl then adapted Libeskind’s geometry into interiors ideal for the Museum’s holdings and programming, while allowing the architecture its own voice.

Re-installation and Special Presentation of the Collection - Architecture is an integral part of the visitor’s experience at the Denver Art Museum, the primary venue for visual arts in the Rocky Mountain region. Important works of art in their own right, the Ponti and Libeskind buildings provide dynamic ways in innovative settings to see selections from the more than 60,000 objects now in the Museum’s holdings. Works of art from the collections are being re-installed for the fall opening. The North Building houses seven floors of galleries dedicated to European painting and sculpture, textiles, Asian art, pre-Columbian and Spanish colonial art, American Indian art and architecture, design and graphics. The Hamilton Building will house western American, African, Oceanic and modern and contemporary galleries.

In the opening year, the Museum will dedicate all special exhibition spaces in the Hamilton Building to art primarily from its permanent holdings. On the first-floor, the 6,000-square-foot Gallagher Family Gallery will showcase works from the Japanese art collection of Kimiko and John Powers. Approximately 120 works spanning nearly seven centuries by artists, some experimenting with Western techniques, and Zen priests will be presented in two rotations. Amassed over three decades i