Night at the Museums kicks off Denver Arts Week

November 14, 1:42 PMDenver Art ExaminerMichael Salamon

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Celebrate 150 Years of Arts and Culture.

Denver kicks off Arts Week week, celebrating 150 Years of Arts and Culture in the Mile High City, with a super-awesome event Night at the Museums.

Based on a popular Paris event (you wanna be like the French, don'tcha?) nearly a dozen of the city's top muesums will stay open late Friday night offering special events, music, food and fun – all for free!

All of the participating museums, including Daniel Libeskind’s spectacular new Denver Art Museum and the Denver Museum of Nature & Science (the fourth largest museum in the nation) will be open for free from 5 to 10 p.m.  In addition to offering a peek at their regular galleries and exhibits, the museums will also offer a series of special events including live music concerts, cash bars and dance performances.  Free shuttle buses will run between the museums making it possible to visit several in one evening.

“There is something special about a museum at night,” says Jayne Buck, vice president of tourism for the Denver Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau.  “We want to turn our museums into the biggest ‘date night’ of the year, offering people a chance to visit new museums, hear live music and experience all the culture, art and history that Denver has to offer as they hop from museum to museum, all for free.”

At the Forney Museum of Transportation, historic cars and trains will be lit for this night only.  Visitors will grab a lantern and stroll through the dark museum lit only by the headlamps of antique cars.

The Molly Brown House will have live Irish music that Molly might have heard while sailing on the Titanic.

The Children’s Museum will be showing silent Old West movies and the Black American West Museum will have a scavenger hunt in historic Five Points neighborhood.

Ballet Ariel and the Hannah Kahn Dance Company will perform in the dramatic lobby of the Denver Art Museum, while the Kirkland Museum of Decorative & Fine Art will have a jazz concert with Denver legend Charlie Burrell.

At the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, you can hang out with some of the world’s cutting-edge polar scientists and explorers at POLAR-PALOOZA! This multimedia road show will present Earth’s iciest, most remote regions. See a 130,000-year-old piece of ice, try on extreme cold weather gear or learn an Alaskan Native dance.

Denver's hippest museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, is going all out:

As the city’s only museum dedicated solely to presenting contemporary art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver enhances the cultural offerings of the city. In order to promote cultural growth, the museum is focusing on connecting people of all ages and  backgrounds to contemporary art during the week. Free admission times allow access to all from 5pm – 10pm on Friday, November 14th for Night of the Museums and from 10am – 6pm during the KeyBank Family Free Day on November 22nd. MCA DENVER’s MI 5 Educational program will be featured during the week through performances and tours that cater to various learning styles. 

Oh man, it looks like it's going to be a long night. Better wear some comfortable shoes...