March 19, 2024
Spring Exhibition Inspired Reading List from the Denver Public Library
The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver presents three solo spring exhibitions by artists whose work explores relationships between the natural and the non-human world. Gala Porras-Kim: A Hand in Nature, Steven J. Yazzie: Meandered, Ken Gun Min: The Lost Paradise.
Our book savvy friends at the Denver Public Library put together a list of suggested readings and movies inspired by the exhibitions that you may check out today!
Do you have your library card? You can register in person or online for free! Click here for more information. MCA Denver is proud to participate in the Denver Public Library’s Museum and Cultural Pass. The Museum and Cultural Pass provides free access to participating cultural institutions in Denver. For more information, click here.
Heirloom - Ashia Ajani
Built of resilience, Ajani's family persisted, grew, fragmented, expanded, and came back together. All the while, as members found themselves marred by history and placelessness, they passed down our stories, recipes, love of plants, and old-school wisdom. This story is one of how nature and humans are inextricably tied to one another and in fact, need each other to survive. Drawing from an ecocritical perspective, Ajani imagines inheritance as what can be left for future generations, what can be passed down, what needs to be preserved, what earth lessons are most relevant to aid in weathering this ever-evolving world.
Virga & Bone: Essays from Dry Places - Craig Childs
A deeply felt essay collection focusing upon a vivid series of desert icons--a sheet of virga over Monument Valley, white seashells in dry desert sand, boulders impossibly balanced. Writer and adventurer Craig Childs delves into the primacy of our starkest landscapes and the profound nature of the more-than-human.
Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits: Inside the Fight to Reclaim Native America’s Culture - Chip Colwell
A fascinating account of both the historical and current struggle of Native Americans to recover sacred objects that have been plundered and sold to museums. Museum curator and anthropologist Chip Colwell asks the all-important question: Who owns the past? Museums that care for the objects of history or the communities whose ancestors made them.
24 Frames - Abbas Kiarostami
In his final film, Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami created a dialogue between his work as a filmmaker and his work as a photographer. A sustained meditation on the process of image-making, 24 Frames is a graceful and elegiac farewell from one of the giants of world cinema.
Anthropocene: The Human Epoch
The film follows the research of an international body of scientists, the Anthropocene Working Group who, after nearly 10 years of research, argue that the Holocene Epoch gave way to the Anthropocene Epoch in the mid-twentieth century as a result of profound and lasting human changes to the Earth.
