Officials at the Museum of Contemporary Denver have announced an $18 million campaign to renovate their 10-year-old building in Lower Downtown, expand programming, launch a civic art initiative and bolster the museum’s endowment.
Dubbed “Elevated Heartbeat,” the campaign has been silently under way for months with about $13 million, or 72 percent of the total, already raised — including $5 million from board chairman and Liberty Global CEO Mike Fries and his wife, Michelle.
Their gift includes naming rights to the museum’s 27,000-square-foot, David Adjaye-designed building at 15th and Delgany streets, which will be renamed the Mike and Michelle Fries Building.
“(Museum director) Adam Lerner and his team have curated world class exhibitions, delivered innovative and impactful programming, and brought the power of art to thousands of teens in our community,” Fries said in a news release Wednesday.
A gift of $3.5 million from former trustees Mark Falcone and Ellen Bruss will also establish “a major endowment and will include naming rights to the director and curator positions,” according to MCA Denver.
However, much of the campaign’s fuel comes directly from the museum’s swelling attendance, which has doubled since 2014, with over 75,000 visitors in the past year, Lerner said. Among those people, 10,000 teenagers visited or participated in MCA Denver programs, up from 1,500 when the museum launched its teen programming in 2013.
“Especially over the last three years, it’s been this incredibly rapid rise in our participation here,” Lerner said. “We’ve also brought on board a lot of people who are really excited about what Denver is becoming, both in our donor base and board of trustees, and a lot of people who are very invested in this part of town as the forward edge of that.”
From its LoDo perch, MCA Denver has a view of not only downtown Denver but the hip, fast-growing Platte Valley, Lower Highland and Highland neighborhoods, which house some of the city’s most acclaimed restaurants and bars. “Hooking into that energy” has been Job No. 1 for Lerner and his team, he said.
“We’re focused on events, and that’s what the younger generation wants: To know what’s everybody doing this weekend, or even tonight. We’ve created programs that mix our traditional exhibition program with dynamic events that allow us to connect to people’s lifestyles,” he said.
The coveted 18-34-year-old demographic makes up the largest category of museum visitors, MCA Denver officials said, which means a bigger teen space at the MCA is a must for the expansion plan. The museum also reported hosting more than 120 education and experiential programs in the past year.
A new local-art program called The Octopus Initiative, so-named because its goal is “putting art in the hands of many,” will commission Denver artists to produce works for an art-sharing program that allows anyone in the city to borrow them for up to a year. The program will launch in March 2018 and take over the space formerly occupied by the Open Shelf Library.
Other pieces of the $18 million campaign include a performance stage on the roof, and a new entrance and reception area. Lerner said MCA officials decided to go public in raising the final $5 million because they were confident that private donors and foundations would quickly fill the gap.
“We’ve cultivated a pretty broad network over the past 20 years,” said Lerner, who became head of the museum in 2009. “We haven’t even gone very far into our existing donor base yet, so I believe we have a very strong case to make to all the new people coming to Denver.”
MCA Denver’s announcement arrives amid several major fundraising campaigns at other area cultural institutions, such as the Denver Art Museum’s $150 million North Building renovation and a $937 million bond package, up for vote next week, that includes tens of millions for the art museum, the Denver Zoo, Denver Botanic Gardens and the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.
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