MAS Context




	2 \| EVENTS SUMMER 09 IN GOOD WE TRUST In summer of 2010, Denver will host the first Biennial of the Americas titled "In Good We Trust". A citywide international cultural event, it will include exhibitions, public programs and signature art installations. John Hickenlooper, Mayor of the City and County of Denver, and Bruce Mau, Creative Director of the Denver Biennial of the Americas, presented the event at the Gates Center at the Denver Zoo in May 26, 2009. -> Mayor John Hickenlooper's presentation -> Bruce Mau's presentation -> Images Contents 01. GLOBAL EVENTS? 02. EMBT GOES EAST 03. DESIGNING VENUES 04. IN GOOD WE TRUST 05. BAUHAUS 2009 06. YES WE CAN 07. CDF 2011 PROPOSAL DOWNLOAD ISSUE 2 ORDER A COPY OF ISSUE 2		IN GOOD WE TRUST MAYOR JOHN HICKENLOOPER Thank you all for coming, we appreciate your interest. I want to express special gratitude to the Boettcher Foundation, they have from the beginning been strong supporters of it and have given the entire concept a reality we would not otherwise been able to have. We had a number of other early supporters, the Bonfils Stanton Foundation, Brad and Kathy Coors, Coors Brewing Company, the Kemper Foundation and others. We are really just beginning to get that momentum and we certainly need to make sure that we have good word of mouth and begin the kind of viral spread into the broader culture. Richard Florida talked a lot about in the “Rise of the Creative Class” how creative people are going to drive the economy of the future, how they are going to be engine of the new economies. They are talking about the clean energy economy, or the alternative political economy and they are all going to have a component of creative people. Certainly when you look at all the measures, and certainly the rates of changes or creative indexes, Denver is growing and evolving at one of the fastest rates of change in the country. We know we have an active area, a robust, entrepreneurial spirit here, and a very diverse population with a strong sense of cultural and recreation opportunities. At the same time, we are in the West, and the West is really transforming, I think not just our region, but also the country and how we look at what is possible. Almost anyone, when I am in New York, Washington, or round and about, and I see a person who was here for the DNC [Democratic National Convention] and they were disoriented by what they found here. Not just that our city has grown and expanded into a real major city— it was that combination of infrastructure, built environment, cultural vitality and integrity that we had, tied in with this interesting western sense of hospitality, for lack of a better word. You use all those high fluting words and you come back to a word like hospitality, but it is a big part of it. The DNC showed us that we can host a very, very powerful event and connect with a huge number of people, not just here, but beyond our state borders, our country and really around the world. And our ambitions are no less expansive for the Denver Biennial of the Americas. We have shown at the convention that we can bring people together, that we can have provocative discussion and exchange of ideas. We showed we can engage our community on the broadest possible level—thousands and thousands and thousands of volunteers—and we also showed we could have a hell of a good time. Don’t for a moment think we won’t have a strong component of fun in everything we do here. Fun will be a big part of it. I think that legacy is what we are trying to build upon here and that we continue to find relevant and appropriate ways to showcase what we have become and who we are. That our innovations, whether it is in business, or education, or recreation, that we are beginning to find solutions and come together and collaborate in ways, and the process of creating those solutions, that most other cities, even outside the United States, aren’t doing at the same level we are. We are aiming the Biennial of the Americas to be a genuinely international, cultural event, with exhibitions, public programs, and satellite exhibitions in cultural organizations all around the metro area. You know, there is this great part in the Broadway musical, “Guys and Dolls,” where they talk about the “only perpetual floating crap game in the world.” Perhaps this is not the right way to think about it, but the programming will all celebrate the power of ingenuity and imagination in this hemisphere, and have programming around art, ideas, and action all taking place in the Americas. The notion is that every two years we bring some of the worlds greatest innovators, thought-thinkers and artists, together in one place, and that we tie that into our local dynamic in such a way that we begin to galvanize a citizen movement; one that expands beyond just here, towards a cross-cultural understanding and great global corporation. Over the last 2 years, I have meet with ten or twelve ambassadors and without question, every case has been genuine flat out excitement, “If you guys can pull this off, we can help you pull this off.” If we can bring to the Americas that sense that we shouldn’t always be looking to Europe, or India or China, that we have a whole universe, right here, connected with far more cultural and legacy connections than we have to these other parts of the world, then we can begin to create the bridge—these ambassadors and their counties want to do it. It is amazing how provincial we have been to our closest neighbors. I think the process to addressing some the largest social issues and really trying to forge some solutions, from everything from health to education to environmental challenges, that notion that we can bring art and ideas together and galvanize them into a really cathartic event. It is not new, but I don’t think anyone has done it like we will do it here. We are going to try to go back and forth, change the lens from micro to macro and macro back to micro, and really push this sense that Denver is a place that is really willing to do things in a different way. Hopefully we create the modern day equivalent to a World’s Fair, a World’s Fair of Ideas and Art, a World’s Fair that does bring all these elements together with exhibitions and large-scale public art, live lectures and symposia, and of course, the great parties. All the concurrent events that help define large extravaganzas like this. Hopefully we will be able to appeal to a broad, broad cross-section of audiences. We don’t want something that will just be for, you know, the intelligentsia, the graduate students of the world, or the rulers and thought-leaders. We want to make sure there are parts of it that get everybody, that attract everybody, and that it will be something with everybody embracing it. We have a number of our higher-education institutions on board with this, 100%, really pushing to be part of it. We have demonstrated again we really have some the best cultural institutions in the country. We are the 18th largest metropolitan area and yet we have the 4th most visited zoo, where we are now and we want to thank the Zoo for hosting us, and the 4th most visited museum of nature and science. We certainly have one of the most talked about art museums, and we have the 2nd largest performing arts center. We have different capacity and infrastructure relative to our population and size than another city in America. I think when you step back and squint at our cultural renaissance, it is going to have a huge economic impact down the road. And people always say that Denver seems to be talked about; Joe Biden was here three hours ago with a number of sectaries, Secretary Vilsack, Secretary of Education, Secretary of H.U.D., Deputy Secretary of Energy and another one as well, they all were saying, “Denver seems to be doing so many things right and seems to be address so many of these things in an innovative way.” You look at all the cultural facilities we just built, not just the Fredrick Hamilton Building for the art museum, and not just the Museum of Contemporary Art, or the Elle Cochran Opera House, or the Kirkland Center for the Visual Arts, those things coming on the heels, one thing after another, really create a drumbeat and define us in a way we aren’t used to. The Biennial is going to take the recent momentum and let us build on it. The Central Exhibition of the inaugural biennial is going to be curated by our great Canadian-born, I am not sure what we call him, “Design Innovator” is what they put here, but that doesn’t do him justice. He has an expansive mind that refuses to be brought back into confines and yet every time he moves around, he takes me to a place, at least in my conversations, “Ah, why didn’t I think of that?” He was very much involved when we did the installation “Dialogue City,” here when we had the DNC—really the first citywide art events—he was very much involved in that making sure it was a citywide arts festival. I think the notion that we can do something like this would be impossible to people without people like Bruce, without people like yourselves. Because this is a very ambitious notion: that we can really create something. The reason the Ambassadors from Latin America are so excited, is because we are expressing to them the opportunity to change the way, not just the way Denver and Colorado feel about Latin America, and Canada — the Americas, but really change the way the world thinks about the Americas and how they see us. And to see it in a much more holistic and respectful way. We will formally launch the Denver Biennial of the Americas on July 21st with a daylong celebration with a number of events, a roundtable discussion, and make sure we will have a rollicking party in the evening. The one thing people said again and again, when they talk about Denver and the Democratic National Convention, and I mean Metropolitan Denver, was the level of collaboration and cooperation and how our city rose to the occasion in a way people just didn’t think possible. That same level of commitment and investment is really what we asking from all of you. We really want to make sure that this is not limited to one or two parts of Denver. We want outbreaks of culture and ideas all over the metropolitan area for these seven weeks. We need your ideas, your resources, we need your feedback, we need your criticism. We are committed to this but know we won’t get half way there if we don’t have the real buy-in from all of you. I saw many of the city council here and they are emblematic of the cooperation that happens on a whole citywide and metro wide basis.