(Photo by Humoring the Goddess) By Emily Ferguson, Westword | I moved to Denver in January 2020, lured by a job and drawn by its creative and innovative ethos. How could I not be? Denver is known for its unique art scene, ranging from swaths of murals to the psychedelic behemoth Meow Wolf, which makes an international Yayoi Kusama tour look like a snoozefest.
In my first few weeks, I went to an exhibit on John Denver, explored the Denver Art Museum and enjoyed a tour of RiNo’s murals led by my friend Jessica McMillan, a local visionary artist. But then it ended, as the pandemic shut down the state.
COVID disrupted the city’s cultural scene, as it has every other aspect of our lives. The Colorado Business Committee for the Arts just put numbers to the pandemic’s hit on the nonprofit arts, cultural and scientific centers in the metro area, and the devastation is hard to miss: The CBCA reports that a decade of growth was lost. After peak interest in culture in 2019, 2020 saw a 34 percent decline in economic activity in cultural nonprofit centers, a 28 percent decrease in jobs and a 49 percent decrease in attendance.
But the report also found a beacon of hope. Last year the metro area registered a 5.5 percent increase in philanthropic and public donations to the nearly 300 groups that volunteered data for the report. There is a key observation in that particular shift: Even as the pandemic robbed us of peaceful walks through museums, Denver residents put their money (an even more precious commodity than normal during these strange times) toward ensuring that museums survived.
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Read Emily’s whole story here:
https://www.westword.com/arts/new-westword-culture-editor-will-highlight-denvers-artistic-offerings-12719617
Emily Ferguson is Westword’s Culture Editor and covers Denver’s flourishing arts and music scene. Before landing this position, she worked as an editor at local and national political publications and held some odd jobs suited her odd personality, such as selling grilled cheese at music festivals and performing with fire. Emily also writes on the arts for the Wall Street Journal, and is an oil painter in her free time.
[Thank you to Alex Teitz, http://www.femmusic.com, for contributing this article.]
Photo: https://humoringthegoddess.com/2020/09/23/faerie-paths-rainbows
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