Over the weekend, the wife and I took a trip to the Denver Art Museum. Not being that much into art, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but we had always heard good reviews of the museum. We had heard that they offered free admission on select Saturdays, but this was not one of them, turns out it is offered on the first Saturday of every month. However, we were surprised to discover it only cost $10 per person (for Colorado residents) so we went inside anyway.

The first gallery we encountered upon walking up the main set of stairs was dedicated to Western American Art. This features many landscape paintings of the wonderful western landscape, and looking back on our visit was one of my favorite sections of the entire museum. This is in the newly built Hamilton Building, and offers an enclosed skywalk over to the the older North Building.

Upon entering the North Building, we were greeted by large wood carvings from the Northwest Coast along with other American Indian art and artifacts. This large gallery continues onto the third floor of this building, where more than 18,000 art objects representing the heritage of all cultures and tribes across the United States and Canada are on display. This is recognized as one of the best of its kind in the United States, and I would highly recommend this area as well.

We spent the better part of three hours just in these small parts of the museum. Realizing that it would be closing soon, we hurried through Pre-Columbian gallery on the fourth floor, which was very overwhelming, before moving on to the Asian art gallery up on the fifth. I wish we had more time to explore this gallery, but this was where we were alerted that we had only fifteen minutes left in our stay. So we rushed up to the newly reopened seventh floor, which contains more Western art. I really wish we had more time to explore this space, but I guess there is always next time.

With that we exited the museum without even exploring any of the new Hamilton Building, other than the second floor. So it’s easy to say that there is more than a days worth of things to see in museum. Though, if you were to arrive earlier than we did, I guess it would be possible to see it all in a day. I was very impressed by the museum, and I’m sure we will return in the future.