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 was born in Wichita, Kansas, in 1941. He earned a BFA from the University of Kansas, in 1963, and an MFA from the University of Colorado, in 1972. Richert’s work has been shown at venues across the U.S., including the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, California; Brooklyn Museum; Cranbrook Art Museum, Broomfield Hills, Michigan; Denver Art Museum, and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He lives and works in Denver.

MCA Denver commissioned London-based artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster to install the site-specific work, Toxic Schizophrenia / Hyper Version as part of the inaugural events for the Museum’s first permanent home, a new facility designed by British architect David Adjaye.

The sculpture, which is the first public project Noble and Webster have realized in the U.S., reaches 32 feet skyward. Blood drips from a jeweled dagger, which pierces the heart. The heart is made of fiberglass and LED lights, in order to curb excess energy consumption and in keeping with the Museum’s LEED-certified status. Toxic Schizophrenia / Hyper Version, which is visible from the busy downtown streets surrounding the Museum, lures people closer through flashing lights and swirling colors, acting as a beacon for the institution. The glow of the piece is reflected in the building’s gray glass façade, incorporating the Museum’s structure into the work’s aesthetic qualities.

Portraying the heart and dagger with a futuristic feel, Noble and Webster give the classical symbol new dimension, form, and light. The artists reclaim this symbol as a sign of empowerment in youth culture today – not unlike the young, forward-thinking, non-collecting MCA Denver.

MCA Denver commissioned Dickey to create work for the MCA Cafe in response to landscape architect Karla Dakin’s rooftop garden. Dickey’s interior installation, Museum as Theater as Garden, is a collection of ceramic plants that bring the garden into the café. Inspired by the 360-degree horizon, Dickey’s low dense mounds hug the ground plane. The props point the viewer toward the garden creating a dialogue between exterior and interior environments to heighten the drama of the theater Dickey imagines.

Kim Dickey was born in 1964 in White Plains, NY. She received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence and her MFA from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, New York. She lives and works in Boulder, Colorado.