Artisans and Kings

A few weeks ago, we went to the Denver Art Museum to check out the gallery titled Artisans and Kings. It was only in town until January 6th, so if you didn’t go, too bad.

The gallery was jam packed from the moment it opened, and when we left there was a line out the door and crossing the nearby street.

I liked what was on display, although I was expecting more portraits. There seemed to be a lot of drawings that Louis XIV had “collected.” (I put this in quotes because he confiscated large collections from people). There was also quite a bit of furniture and tapestries. I don’t know too much about the period in question, so maybe this was to be expected.

Anyway, I learned more about this time period which helped me to understand the incredible amount of decadence. Apparently the kings fancied themselves as descendants of the Roman emperors, and therefore they were entitled to ridiculously disgusting levels of decadence.

It was nice to see the art museum bring this to Denver. The next big show I want to see will be the impressionists.

V-day

Last night Venessa and I went and saw the Cirque Dreams Jungle Fantasy at the Temple Buell Theater. Those people are amazing athletes. The show was very enjoyable and actually made me cringe at times due to the dangerous nature of what they were doing.

The costuming was great and the sense of wonder filled the air. It was truly a great show with a lot of theatrical elements. Parts of the show were infused with comedy and there was also some singing.  I wasn’t too impressed with the singing narrator, but thankfully those moments weren’t too long.

The venue was great as well. We had been there before to see the Nutcracker ballet. This time we were up higher in the seating, but this turned out to be a good thing so that we could see all the stage easily and not get too focused on one area(There are times  during the show when multiple performers are on stage performing different routines, yet somehow managing to look integrated.)

All in all, it was a great experience and I highly recommend it if you get a chance.