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From “Dior” to “Dear Evan Hansen,” Denver’s big-name shows building city’s cultural reputation

A number of blockbuster theater, art and museum hits have increasingly come to Denver in recent years

John Wenzel of The Denver Post
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  • Media got to preview the new ...

    RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

    The Star Wars and The Power of Costume exhibit at The Denver Art Museum on Nov. 10, 2016.

  • A Tusken Raider costume is on ...

    RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

    A Tusken Raider costume is on display at the Star Wars and The Power of Costume exhibit at The Denver Art Museum, Nov. 10, 2016.

  • Media got to preview the new ...

    RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

    The Star Wars and The Power of Costume exhibit at The Denver Art Museum on Nov. 10, 2016.

  • Princess LeiaÕs white gown from 1980 ...

    RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

    Princess Leia's white gown from 1980 is on display at the Star Wars and The Power of Costume exhibit at The Denver Art Museum, Nov. 10, 2016.

  • Jude Lev, 3, is ready to ...

    RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

    Jude Lev, 3, is ready to battle the dark side outside the Denver Art Museum, May 4, 2016.

  • The costume of 900-year-old Jedi Master, ...

    RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

    The costume of 900-year-old Jedi Master, Yoda, is on display at the Star Wars and The Power of Costume exhibit at The Denver Art Museum, Nov. 10, 2016.

  • Star Wars droid costumes are on ...

    RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

    Star Wars droid costumes are on display at the Star Wars and The Power of Costume exhibit at The Denver Art Museum, Nov. 10, 2016.

  • Queen AmidalaÕs Senate gown with headpiece ...

    RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

    Queen Amidala's Senate gown with headpiece from 1999 is on display for media during a preview the Star Wars and The Power of Costume exhibit at The Denver Art Museum, Nov. 10, 2016.

  • Chewbacca, 1977, and Han SoloÕs 1983 ...

    RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

    Chewbacca, 1977, and Han Solo's 1983 costumes are part of the Star Wars and The Power of Costume exhibit at The Denver Art Museum, Nov. 10, 2016.

  • John MolloÕs concept art from 1976 ...

    RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

    John Mollo's concept art from 1976 is on display at the Star Wars and The Power of Costume exhibit at The Denver Art Museum, Nov. 10, 2016.

  • Obi-Wan KenobiÕs Jedi robe from 1977, ...

    RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

    Obi-Wan Kenobi's Jedi robe from 1977, and Queen Amidala's gown from 1999 are part of the Star Wars and The Power of Costume exhibit at The Denver Art Museum, Nov. 10, 2016.

  • Samples of fabric are displayed in ...

    RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

    Samples of fabric are displayed in the costume shop section at the Star Wars and The Power of Costume exhibit at The Denver Art Museum, Nov. 10, 2016.

  • Obi-Wan KenobiÕs fitting room with Jedi ...

    RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

    Obi-Wan Kenobi's fitting room with Jedi robes from 2005 are displayed at the Star Wars and The Power of Costume exhibit at The Denver Art Museum, Nov. 10, 2016.

  • “Star Wars and the Power of ...

    Joe Amon, The Denver Post

    Star Wars and the Power of Costume exhibit at the Denver Art Museum.

  • Star War's artist Ian McCaig does ...

    RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

    Star War's artist Ian McCaig does a quick drawing lesson for media during a preview of the new Star Wars and The Power of Costume exhibit at The Denver Art Museum, Nov. 10, 2016.

  • Darth VaderÕs leather suit with helmet ...

    RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

    Darth Vader's leather suit with helmet and armor, from 2005, is displayed at the Star Wars and The Power of Costume exhibit at The Denver Art Museum, Nov. 10, 2016.

  • Queen AmidalaÕs Senate gown with headpiece ...

    RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

    Queen Amidala's Senate gown with headpiece from 1999 is on display for media during a preview the Star Wars and The Power of Costume exhibit at The Denver Art Museum, Nov. 10, 2016.

  • C-P30's 1980 costume is on display ...

    RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

    C-P30's 1980 costume is on display at the Star Wars and The Power of Costume exhibit at The Denver Art Museum, Nov. 10, 2016.

  • Media got to preview the new ...

    RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

    The Star Wars and The Power of Costume exhibit at The Denver Art Museum on Nov. 10, 2016.

  • Darth VaderÕs stunt mask, with tinted ...

    RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

    Darth Vader's stunt mask, with tinted acrylic and mesh with foam padding, is on display at the Star Wars and The Power of Costume exhibit at The Denver Art Museum, Nov. 10, 2016.

  • Media walks through Padme's costume journey ...

    RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

    Media walks through Padme's costume journey during a preview of the Star Wars and The Power of Costume exhibit at The Denver Art Museum, Nov. 10, 2016.

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Christoph Heinrich feels the power of The Force.

Early on, the director of the Denver Art Museum watched with worry as only a few hundred people per day filtered into an exhibition on Renaissance painting in Venice — despite its expert curation and deep significance in the art world.

Then Darth Vader showed up.

“(Venice) started two or three weeks before ‘Star Wars and the Power of Costume,’ ” Heinrich said of the concurrent 2016 exhibitions. “But as soon as ‘Star Wars’ came, we suddenly had 1,200 to 1,400 people in the Venice galleries every day. Clearly, people who had come to the museum for one thing might be willing to check out a second thing.”

That is crucial in today’s experience-driven arts world, but it’s also a model for other big-budget cultural organizations, which have welcomed an increasing number of blockbuster and award-winning shows that have chosen Denver over larger, better-connected markets such as Boston and Chicago.

Mannequins await placement during setup of ...
AAron Ontiveroz, The Denver Post
Mannequins await placement during setup of for “Dior: From Paris to the World” at the Denver Art Museum on Friday, Oct. 12, 2018. The show opens on Nov. 19, 2018.

From the art museum’s upcoming “Dior: From Paris to the World” (opening Nov. 19) and the U.S.-exclusive “Claude Monet: The Truth of Nature” (which opens Oct. 20, 2019) to recent Broadway productions of “Hamilton,” Disney’s “Frozen” and the Tony-winning “Dear Evan Hansen,” Denver’s cultural assets are driving new memberships and loyalty at traditional art institutions. Each success climbs atop the last one, adding new rungs to the ladder, civic boosters say.

“We’re obviously one of hundreds of cities across the country that presents touring Broadway shows,” said John Ekeberg, executive director of Broadway at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. “But our city has developed a very well-deserved and strong reputation of having supportive audiences who tend to show up and embrace new work by buying tickets. To have Denver essentially be on the front edge of new work coming out of New York is unique.”

Top-of-mind, too, for business leaders are tourism sales-tax revenues and hotel occupancy. Not only do they support jobs and new programming, satisfied visitors to Denver’s theaters, museums and concert venues spread the word after leaving the city, said Jayne Buck, vice president of tourism at Visit Denver.

“It’s been fascinating to see the transformation of what was an amazing sports town into something that now has an equally strong, vibrant cultural scene,” said Buck, who noted 2017 as the 12th consecutive year of growth for Denver tourism, with a record $6.5 billion in revenue — a 5 percent increase over 2016. “Leisure and entertainment travel fills in the gaps between summer vacation and holiday tourism, and it continues to generate hotel, restaurant, shopping and cultural spending when conventions aren’t as likely to meet.”

“Why don’t you come to Denver?”

  • A detailed image of one of ...

    Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

    A detailed image of one of the Dead Sea Scrolls that was on display as part of the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science on March 6, 2018 in Denver.

  • Debora Ben Ami, Senior Curator of ...

    Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

    Debora Ben Ami, Senior Curator of the Iron Age & Persian Periods for the Israel Antiquities Authority, walks past large pots, jars and capitals from temples from the 7th and 8th century BC that were part of the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science on March 6, 2018 in Denver.

  • A detailed image of one of ...

    Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

    A detailed image of one of the Dead Sea Scrolls that was on display as part of the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science on March 6, 2018 in Denver.

  • Debora Ben Ami, Senior Curator of ...

    Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

    Debora Ben Ami, Senior Curator of the Iron Age & Persian Periods for the Israel Antiquities Authority, shows one of the many displays that are part of the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science on March 6, 2018 in Denver.

  • A collection of large pots and ...

    Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

    A collection of large pots and jars from the 7th and 8th century BC are part of the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science on March 6, 2018 in Denver.

  • Debora Ben Ami, Senior Curator of ...

    Debora Ben Ami, Senior Curator of the Iron Age & Persian Periods for the Israel Antiquities Authority, stands in front of a depiction of an iconic Israelite home that was part of the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science on March 6, 2018 in Denver.

  • The signature of the potter who ...

    Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

    The signature of the potter who made this pot from the 7th and 8th century BC can be seen in the middle of the pot that was part of the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science on March 6, 2018 in Denver.

  • Tania Treiger, senior conservator with the ...

    Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

    Tania Treiger, senior conservator with the Israel Antiquities Authority, left, works with Jude Southward, conservator at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, right, to complete a condition report on the Dead Sea Scrolls behind closed doors at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science on March 6, 2018 in Denver.

  • A wall, representing the Western Wall, ...

    Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

    A wall, representing the Western Wall, holds a real piece of stone, lower left, on display during the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science on March 6, 2018 in Denver.

  • Helena Sokolov, head of the Foreign ...

    Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

    Helena Sokolov, head of the Foreign Exhibitions Department, Israel Antiquities Authority, works on a display that is part of the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science on March 6, 2018 in Denver.

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Local support leads to strong national reputations. The Denver Museum of Nature & Science’s wildly popular Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition, which closed Sept. 3, finished with 25 percent higher attendance than initially projected (the museum declined to share total attendance numbers). About 4,500 new card holders joined the museum based on a Dead Sea Scrolls-branded membership campaign, 10 percent higher than the average for similar types of exhibitions, the museum said.

However, given the Dead Sea Scrolls’ wide appeal, 67 percent of attendees were nonmembers. That’s compared with an average of 45 percent for other “upcharged” (or ticketed beyond general-admission) exhibitions at the museum.

These programming coups are not simply a function of Denver’s years-long population boom, said Nancy Gibbs, a veteran Broadway manager and producer based in New York City. They’re the result of relationship-building, successful past runs and smart leadership.

“I began to see that people like Randy Weeks (the late DCPA president) and John Ekeberg were these visionaries,” said Gibbs, a Colorado native who moved away in 1977 and has worked on shows such as “Peter and the Starcatcher,” “Come from Away” and “Wicked.” “When (Weeks) saw a Broadway show he liked, he said, ‘Why don’t you come to Denver and get your tour started there?’ ”

Then as now, the problem is that Denver is the biggest city for nearly a thousand miles in any direction. Touring bands and shows that stop here do so out of necessity to make their travel time worth the expense, following a handful of well-worn routes through the Rocky Mountain West.

But Weeks cultivated Denver specifically as a Broadway destination, so much so that DCPA president Janice Sinden recently noted that “Dear Evan Hansen” — which closed its North American premiere run at the Buell Theatre on Oct. 13 — was the 12th Broadway tour to originate in Denver.

AAron Ontiveroz, The Denver Post
Ben Levi Ross, who plays Evan in the national tour, reads in his dressing room on Monday, Sept. 17, before “Dear Evan Hansen” opened its national tour at the Buell Theater in Denver on Sept. 25.

“A show cannot afford to do more than one stop before Broadway,” Gibbs said. “Chicago, Boston and D.C. are old-fashioned try-out towns, so from a commercial point of view, the DCPA has been very savvy about getting these shows in. ‘Wicked’ will play its sixth Denver engagement (in May 2019), and every time we go back we’ve had a longer, stronger run than before.”

It helps that Denver, despite lingering cowtown stereotypes, can boast of motivated audiences. Colorado ranks third nationally in attendance for live music, theater or dance shows at 44.4 percent of all adults participating, according to a 2016 study by the National Endowment for the Arts. That makes us a safe bet for untested work, Gibbs said, but also for major touring debuts.

The attention and revenues are not spread evenly, however. Organizations such as Opera Colorado, Colorado Symphony and History Colorado tend to fight for their own corner of the spotlight amid others’ mainstream blockbusters. As a state, Colorado has also been unable to muster lucrative film incentives to offer Hollywood producers, sending most film crews to neighboring states such as New Mexico and Utah.

Furthermore, well-attended exhibitions do not equal artistic quality — or responsibility to the nonprofit mission of preserving, displaying and educating the public on top-tier art.

“I was really nervous when we put the Yves Saint Laurent exhibition on the program, because I had no idea whether this would fly or whether it would be a major flop,” the art museum’s Heinrich said of that 2012 show. “But at that time it turned out to be our second most successful show — Van Gogh being the first. Suddenly, we saw there was a little bit different audience out there we weren’t serving: people who love fashion.”

“Amazing support structure”

  • Asher Mariotti, 9, of Henderson, dressed ...

    Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

    Asher Mariotti, 9, of Henderson, dressed up as Hamilton to attend opening night of the hit Broadway show Hamilton at the Temple Hoyne Buell Theatre on Feb. 27, 2018 in Denver.

  • Lynnea Cole, left, and her husband ...

    Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

    Lynnea Cole, left, and her husband Gary have their photo taken in front of the theatre sign as they arrive to attend opening night of the hit Broadway show Hamilton at the Temple Hoyne Buell Theatre on Feb. 27, 2018 in Denver.

  • Security officer Matt Prater, with K2 ...

    Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

    Security officer Matt Prater, with K2 Solutions, and his dog Juice, monitor the outside of the Temple Hoyne Buell Theatre as people arrive to attend opening night of the hit Broadway show Hamilton at the Temple Hoyne Buell Theatre on Feb. 27, 2018 in Denver.

  • Sam Barnes, left, his twin boys ...

    Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

    Sam Barnes, left, his twin boys Solomon, second from left and Samson, second from right, 15, and his wife Brandy have their photo taken in front of the theatre sign as they arrive to attend opening night of the hit Broadway show Hamilton at the Temple Hoyne Buell Theatre on Feb. 27, 2018 in Denver.

  • Tedd Langowski works to keep the ...

    Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

    Tedd Langowski works to keep the lines moving and people heading towards the theatre doors as folks arrive to attend opening night of the hit Broadway show Hamilton at the Temple Hoyne Buell Theatre on Feb. 27, 2018 in Denver.

  • Lines of people wait for the ...

    Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

    Lines of people wait for the doors to open at the Temple Hoyne Buell Theatre for opening night of the hit Broadway show Hamilton on Feb. 27, 2018 in Denver.

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Not every experiment works, Heinrich admitted. But it helps that Denver has the nationally unique Scientific & Cultural Facilities District, which for the past three decades has supported arts nonprofits with a penny-per-$10 tax in the seven-county metro area. SCFD’s top-tier support is the equivalent of an extra $150 million endowment for the museum, Heinrich said.

The nearly 300 cultural institutions that make up the SCFD family contribute more than $1.8 billion to the regional economy, employ more than 10,000 people and reach approximately 4 million children each year, according to an SCFD study. They also frequently network and cooperate with each other on programming, fundraising and educational outreach.

That only bolsters Visit Denver and the Colorado Tourism Office’s regional and international marketing efforts, Buck said, as arts and culture institutions, hotels, and restaurants then partner for themed, tourism-driving package deals and discounts. The legislative cheerleading and economic development efforts of Gov. John Hickenlooper and Denver Mayor Michael Hancock are also “a huge component,” said the DCPA’s Ekeberg.

“I wouldn’t still be here without the amazing support structure and cooperation among politicians,” Heinrich said, noting that other curators — such as “Dior” head Florence Müller, a respected art-world veteran and textiles expert who moved to Denver from France on the strength of the city’s cultural scene — are decamping to the Mile High City from larger markets.

If “Dior,” or Broadway’s “Hamilton,” or Dead Sea Scrolls can get people in the door, then museums, theaters and venues are hoping to keep them there by customizing and adding value to these touring shows — as when Denver Art Museum curators added 300 objects to the Smithsonian-backed “Star Wars” costume exhibit, as well as taking deep dives into Lucasfilm’s physical archives amid months of research that underlined real-life historical inspirations.

Statistics showed that approximately 40 percent of visitors to the “Star Wars” costume exhibit were first-time Denver Art Museum visitors. To organizers, that reinforced the museum as the ideal choice for the sought-after pop-culture juggernaut, which decided to make Denver its third stop on tour — and one of only six cities it has visited since 2015.

That’s a powerful and captive audience to work with, Heinrich said. But it’s still work.

“To do these shows right, and not just some small-town version of it, you need some sort of entrepreneurial spirit as well as great support from a community that cherishes these things,” he said. “That’s what we have here.”

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