Art in Denver
Just returned from a quick trip to Colorado to see family. On our last day we went to the 16th Street Mall and walked over to Larimer Square, the historic district that we visited several times in the seventies when it was just getting started. What a shock! In the seventies there were a few struggling galleries and some artists' studios, but on the whole the area didn't show a lot of promise. I don't remember anything at all being on 16th Street until several years later, when my sister and I rode a little trolley from one end to the other. Now they have huge buses that run a block apart the entire length of the mall, which is probably a mile or more long. There is a Starbucks in nearly every block. People everywhere of every description. Nobody dresses up to go "downtown" in Denver, at least not to the mall. The Suits that work nearby come for lunch and every other person is talking on a cell phone. Ah, progress. Oh, yes, the art. We didn't find any in Larimer Square and didn't have time to find out where the arts district is, which I'm sure must exist somewhere. I bought my R.C. Gorman lithograph of the Barefoot Lady at Larimer Square in 1979. I bought it because I loved her, not as an investment, but it appears she may have grown in value through the years. She's 7/100 in the edition.
Labels: art, Denver, Gorman, Larimer Square
posted by Nita at 5:11 PM
1 Comments:
I grew up in Denver. In the 50s, Larimer Square was the bad part of town where vagrants were. Sixteenth Street where the mall now is, was where the large department stores were before shopping centers in the 'burbs. Denver Dry Goods, May Company, Daniels & Fisher, Neusteters were all lost in the late '60s, as in many other cities, the stores moved out of downtown. So what you referred to as "nothing there" more accurately could be described as "nothing left there." I love your blog. I find it quite interesting and inspirational. Mary Hamilton
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