Exhibit Pulls the Curtain Back on Nuts and Bolts of Addition

Exhibit Pulls the Curtain Back on Nuts and Bolts of Addition
The Denver Art Museum's $90.5 million addition, a dizzying explosion of jutting, angled walls, is easily the area's most radical new building since, well, the institution's original, still controversial 1971 structure.

So naturally the project has raised plenty of questions, including:

Who is design architect Daniel Libeskind, and how was he chosen?

Why does the building have such an unconventional form?

How is it constructed, and what keeps it from collapsing?

A new exhibit at the Denver Art Museum, "Building out of the Box," sets out to provide some answers.

It offers a primer on the 146,000 square-foot structure, from the mechanics of its high- tech construction to the behind the scenes planning that has gone into it.

"The point of the show is not to tell the entire story of the art museum," said Andrea Fulton, the institution's marketing and public relations manager.

"It was to sort of give snapshots of the process that we went through and really highlight the people who have been involved with it."

Museum officials don't want anyone to get the wrong idea.

Occupying just 5,000 square feet in three galleries and part of the front lobby, this offering is hardly a blockbuster art exhibition, not an art exhibition at all.

Rather than paintings or sculptures, it contains models,