Most of the work on the Denver Art Museum’s $150 million renovation has been happening quietly behind the scenes for the last two years.
But on Monday morning, officials watched as the first, large-scale public component took shape near their Gio Ponti-designed North Building, which is getting an upgrade for its 50th birthday in 2021.
Or rather, they watched as it was completely dismantled.
“It’s an emblem of progress,” said Christoph Heinrich, director of the DAM, as he squinted into the sun while a crane lifted steel beams into the air a few feet away. “To see it go is a big step.”
Workers from Henderson’s Duffy Crane & Hauling were on site as part of the two-day “deinstall” of the sculpture known as Lao Tzu — the 30-foot-tall, 16-ton piece by artist Mark di Suvero.
The reddish-orange tangle of industrial I-beams and steel circles is just one of more than 50,000 objects that must be carefully packed and relocated before the renovation can begin. The museum raised most of the $150 million privately, while a quarter of the project is being paid for with cultural funds from the $937 million General Obligation Bond voters passed earlier this month.
Lao Tzu has been a fixture on Acoma Plaza since 1996, when it was placed in the pedestrian-heavy space between the original museum building and the main branch of the Denver Public Library.
“There are so many things that are connected with each other, and if you tackle one you have to tackle them all,” Heinrich said. “You really have to think the next five, and possibly 10, moves ahead. And this chess game was prepared almost two years ago now by engineers and architects.”
In the scope of the North Building’s 50-year history, it’s an operation of unprecedented complexity — wrapping and transporting tens of thousands of priceless artworks in order to safely renovate and upgrade their home, as well as digging new underground spaces for a welcome center that will replace the squat, aging South Building.
However, officials have learned a lot over the years, including the fact that placing or removing artwork has much more in common than the display period that comes in between.
“You plan for it using scale models, but the actual siting sometimes will change at installation,” said Rebecca Hart, curator of modern and contemporary art, of Lao Tzu. “So it may need to twist five degrees one way or the other. Most of these large-scale sculptures have footprint surveys, and we try to do everything to accommodate those. But at the time was installed, that kind of record wasn’t kept in the artist’s studio.”
In fact, the sculpture, which was originally fabricated in 1991, has sat in the same place almost from the moment it was assembled on site 21 years ago.
Give or take a few inches.
“We put it together and then needed to move it just slightly to get it on axis, so (artist di Suvero) had a crane come in and pick the whole thing up,” Hart said.
The museum has loaned or transported major sculptures before, such as Deborah Butterfield’s bronze horses, which spent some time at Denver Botanic Gardens in 2015, and a recent loan of an Alexander Calder sculpture (also to the Botanic Gardens).
In one week, construction fencing will appear around Acoma Plaza, following a pause for the Parade of Lights. The fencing will stay up as long as the other outdoor sculptures are safely deinstalled and moved — including Edgar Heap of Birds’ Wheel sculpture, which briefly ignited controversy last year after the artist said he had not been consulted on its movement.
“The next really big step is when the wrecking ball comes,” said Heinrich, wearing an orange vest over a crisp blue suit. “We’re hoping to be ready by mid-January, but we just closed the (North) building a week ago, so there’s still plenty of artwork that needs to be packed, and some of the larger works are a little bit more complicated.”
Those larger items include artist Red Grooms’ Shoot-Out, a cartoonish wagon sculpture on the roof of the South Building, and Lawrence Weiner’s As to Be in Plain Sight, a text-based work on the south wall of the building facing West 13th Avenue. Similar care — and equipment — will be used in their deinstallation.
Lao Tzu offered a valuable run-through for the dismantling crew, who easily twisted off its chunky red-orange bolts and slowly guided the girders to a flatbed truck with long yellow ropes that hung from the crane.
“Each sculpture is going to be unique, depending on the climate it’s been in, the number of years it’s been on site and how many times it’s been painted,” Hart said, noting that Lao Tzu is coated in a weather-resistant outdoor paint typically used for bridges and skyscrapers. “The rain, and the freeze-thaw cycle, really affects this sort of ‘fusing’ the most.”
Museum officials also noted that finally being able to see Acoma Plaza without Lao Tzu — for the first time in more than two decades — has its own advantages.
“You can look at a thousand renderings and plans and you’ll never get a feeling for it,” Heinrich said, standing near the spot where a new 8,000 square-foot conservation center will be constructed. “We just had to find the right thread to pull first.”
