Clark Richert’s site-specific installation for The Lane along the outside of the museum, Riemannian Tangencies (2007), is a response to the building’s architecture and site, which is based on the Golden ratio. The Golden ratio or Golden proportion has long been employed by artists and architects as it is perceived to possess exceptional balance and aesthetic properties that are naturally pleasing. An example from Classical Greek architecture is the Parthenon in Athens, built in the 5^th century BC.

Richert’s work for MCA Denver relates to the David Adjaye-designed building through a non-repeating pattern called Penrose Tiling that is interrelated by the Golden Proportion. A green line, applied in a winding curve over the two-tone concrete pattern, randomly touches upon points in the underlying pattern and provides, in Richert’s own words, ​“a lyrical movement reflecting the unpredictability of the creative activities for which the Museum was created.”

Clark Richert (1941−2021) was born in Wichita, Kansas. He earned his BFA at University of Kansas in 1963, and his MFA from the University of Colorado in 1972. In 1966, he was co-recipient of the Dymaxion Award from Buckminster R. Fuller, and he was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1980. In the early eighties, Richert moved to Denver, where he began a teaching career that spanned three decades, earning him a reputation as a valued mentor and advocate among hundreds of students and peers. His work was featured in MCA Denver’s exhibition West of Center in 2011, and he was the subject of a retrospective exhibition, Clark Richert in hyperspace, at the museum in 2019. Richert’s work as a member of Drop City was featured in Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia, which was presented at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. His work has also been shown at the Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI; and the Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley. His work can be found in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Wichita Art Museum, Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art, Denver Art Museum, the Kimpton Hotel Born, and the ART, a Hotel in Denver, among others.