The Denver International Airport Art and Culture Master Plan established a new vision for an evolving airport. One of the busiest airports in the world, Denver International Airport was already home to a leading public art program but needed to respond to a new set of conditions, including a scheduled expansion. Collaborating with Todd W. Bressi, Creative Time, Gorbet Design, Dwyer Brown and Deanna Miller, Via developed a plan that places the airport as a gateway to the region’s creative community and promotes the region’s cultural resources to visitors and local passengers. The plan reinvented the Airport’s percent-for-art and exhibition programs as a full-fledged cultural organization and developed the airport’s landside public areas as a new arts district. Our recommendations were based on extensive benchmarking we conducted of peer arts and culture programs, a detailed survey taken by hundreds of passengers and stakeholders, as well as other interviews, research and analysis. The resulting plan addresses the challenges of the existing art program and sets out a strong, mission-focused creative and curatorial approach for arts and culture programming, while allowing the program the flexibility to catalyze and take advantage of opportunities as they emerge.
