Denver’s latest cultural attraction, the History Colorado Center is scheduled to open to public on
April 28, 2012 and will feature exhibits and programs that are bound to blend technology, media, environments and artifacts. Located at 13th Avenue and Broadway in Denver, this museum is intended to bring to life the rich Colorado history through civic engagements and rich experience of various exhibitions and programs. This museum has replaced the Colorado History Museum, which was demolished in May 2010 to make room for the Ralph L. Carr Colorado Judicial Center.
The 200,000-square-foot, $110.8 million History Colorado Center will definitely be a place for self-discovery, motivation offering scholarships and lots of fun. Here you will experience innovative high-tech and hands-on interactive multimedia besides genuine artifacts and stimulating memories and stories of Colorado’s famous people.
Anyone who is attracted to the charm of Colorado will undeniably want to visit this new Smithsonian Affiliate, the History Colorado Center. It’s predicted that this museum will be at the top of the ‘must see list’ for many Denver visitors, history buffs and families.
In order to develop exhibit content, The History Colorado Center has acquired the professional services of nationally renowned exhibit developer Janet Kamien, whose credits include the exhibition program at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. The exhibit design contract was awarded to Andrew Merriell & Associates, a Santa Fe, New Mexico firm responsible for master planning and exhibition design for museums nationally and internationally. Last but not the least, the services of Richard Lewis Media Group, whose most recent work is on display in the Human Evolution Hall at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C., were retained to design media components.
The Exhibits at the museum will open in several phases. However, the inaugural exhibits are designed to celebrate the spirit of the people over the past 10,000 years and the long-lasting communities that they built. The first phase of museum exhibitions will include:
• The Great Map of Colorado & Time Machine
It is a 40/60 foot terrazzo tile map of Colorado imbedded into the floor of the museum’s atrium and is part of Colorado’s Art in Public Places program that integrates the art into the built environment and civic spaces. The map was created by nationally acclaimed artist Steven Weitzman and is the finest work of art and an interpretive experience all together. Visitors will be able to wander across the map and explore this artistic interpretation of Colorado’s exquisite landscape.
This amazing map comes to life with History Colorado’s own “Time Machine,” where visitors push an H.G. Wells-inspired device over the map to hit hot spots that take them to the video stories from that region. These Time Machine stories include serious subjects like the 1914 Ludlow Massacre and the Cheyenne Dog Soldiers to humorous tales of the Colorado/Texas Tomato Wars of the 1980s and Max Kuner’s famous Dancing Pickles.
• The People, the Place & the Promise
This is a vibrant media wall with 132 interlocking LCD screens in the History Colorado Center’s atrium that takes visitors to the chronology of Colorado history, from 10,000 years ago to the present. This magnificent exhibit is a beautiful collage of images that plays every hour.
• Destination Colorado
This 5,000-square-foot exhibit takes the visitors to “the Arcadia of the West”, the 1920s dry land farming town of Keota. Planned especially for families, this exhibit invites visitors to enroll in the town high school, ride down a dusty road in a Model T, share town news in a homestead kitchen, climb into a hayloft and swap eggs at the general store. Town residents, who are based on the actual residents of the town and presented on oversized media screens, greet visitors in each location and share the stories of their lives in Keota, while text panels provide a national and international context to this local story.
• Colorado Stories
This 9,500-square-foot exhibit is about eight distinct Colorado communities from the 1300s to the present and is designed to illustrate the diversity of Colorado’s people, culture and environments.
The exhibits at the History Colorado Center promises to bring a unique experience that visitors would enjoy and learn from. One can descend into a 1880s hard-rock mine shaft to learn about mucking, mules, blasting and the pluck that it took to do this important work or can visit Steamboat Springs circa 1915 to take a virtual ski jump off the famed Howelsen Hill and meet the man who introduced ski jumping to North America. They can also choose an avatar to venture into Bent’s Old Fort in the 1800s to trade with Kit Carson, Captain John C. Frémont and Chief Yellow Wolf at this global trading post.
There will be stories from Lincoln Hills (one of only a few resort communities in the U.S. for African Americans during the 1920s Jim Crow era), Amache, and the survivors of the internment camp forced on Japanese Americans during World War II and not to forget, the devastating collision of communities that resulted in the tragic 1864 Sand Creek Massacre.
According to Ed Nichols, History Colorado President and CEO, this History Colorado Center will help people understand the present in the context of the past!!
