Field Notes II

Observations
Sunday 16th 2010
Denver Art Museum intersection in 13th avenue

12:30-1:00
I started out by standing on the same intersection where I began my first observations (13th Avenue). During the first five minutes I noticed a mass flock of people traversing through this area extensively, either from or to Civic Park. Most likely this was due as it was the end of the week and a lot of people use this day to expend it outdoors anyway. This time the mass of people had a wide array of ethnicities involved: many white, some Asian, and a lot of Latino. At this time of the day, the sunlight brightened the edifices that stood beside me and the heat was relatively pleasant to what had been forecasted.

12:35 pm – I traversed to the Western side of the museum complex to get a different perspective from last time. The most noticeable things were a nice flat green on the southern end with a few vegetation scattered on it, mostly seasonal flowers. There are a few houses in the vicinity and a huge parking lot. The museum itself doesn’t look very different on that side as its arrangement is near symmetrical the main difference is that there are not many doors and windows on the lower level of the unusual main building. After this I decided to head into the mid-section separating the Cultural Complex and the DAM.
As time passed, people kept traversing through this path and not many actually entered the museum during this lapse of time. I was sure glad I didn’t plan to actually visit the museum today. Sporadically, a few couples and some families made their way into the entrance but not a significant number. Most of these folks were white middle and teen-age individuals whose appearance didn’t seem artistic at all.

12:30-12:40 pm
A group of skaters appeared (around 8), the group was diversified and they started skating around this area. Other than this, people kept using this way as a means of transportation only as if this place was nothing more than a mere sidewalk.

12:45-1:00 pm
At this time I briefly talked to one individual of the skater group. He preferred being called “Nerd” as that was his nickname, very obvious by the way he looked with the big glasses he has to wear. I started by asking “why do you guys skate here?” and he responded that there was no special reason as the group just roams around town skating anywhere possible. Then I went on asking why they had chosen this exact spot. He replied that it was wide enough to try speed races among one another, and that the park benches and the occasional steps found in this area were useful when trying various tricks. Then I actually asked him if he had ever entered the Art Museum and he bluntly stated “hell nah”. The last question I made was “Well what do you think about the museum?” and he said that it looked kind of tight but that he wasn’t into art or any of that stuff. As I had brought my skateboard with me, he ended up inviting me to skate around with the group. For the last 5-10 minutes I did join the group and we raced each other. Nerd and two of the other skaters did some killer moves in the benches and he tried to teach me a really weird back-flip, like a 360 spin of the board while I was jumping from the bench. I fell down hard like 10 times before getting the hang of it. After this I had to rush back home, and I went towards 16 Street Mall towards the light rail.

Response:
A lot more people were walking the intersection this time and a lot more ethnic groups were present which was tremendously different from last time. Even though the museum was open this time, a lot of people who entered the museum didn’t seem interested at all. There were a lot of similarities in the attitudes of the people I observe in this space just like last observation period. It seems as the museum is not even important in this place, and that a people have other uses for this place. For example, the skaters used this spot to skate around and have fun instead of observing the structure present in DAM or the complex itself. I contribute this lack of acknowledgment for DAM as a result of poor advertising as I have rarely heard anything about Denver Art Museum, I mean how can I be interested in a place that doesn’t tell me that I actually need to go. Overall I think this was a productive day and I’m starting to think of how I will attack my final set of observations