Edward Weston: "Dunes, Oceano," 1936.

Edward Weston holds an upper berth in the pantheon of modern American photography, and it's easy to see why. A solid Modernist who began working in the early twentieth century, Weston -- who was also a great technician in the darkroom -- breathed life into inanimate objects and places, turning nautilus shells, peppers and rippled dunes, with their natural curves and shadows, into sensual images seething with inner beauty. And when he took on the human form itself, well -- look out! Just as his still lifes and landscapes anthropomorphize shapes, Weston's nudes picture humanity in its most lovely, natural state.

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History Colorado Center

Part of the History Colorado's opening exhibits.

The brand new History Colorado Center opens on Saturday. Last week, in my column about the wonderfully-designed museum, I pointed out how poor the two debut shows, Colorado Stories and Destination Colorado, are. Rather than trying to elevate the discussion, the museum and History Colorado chief operating officer Kathryn Hill, have dumbed it down, relying on surveys, charts, graphs and focus groups in order to arrive at the lowest common denominator for exhibits. It was a missed opportunity.

In my column, I made two suggestions for the kinds of shows that the museum could -- and should -- have opened with. Here they are, along with eight others.

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"Liberty," 1997. Gijs Bakker, Netherlands.

"While President George H.W. Bush had been known for saying 'Read my lips,' I began urging colleagues and reporters to 'Read my pins.'" -- Madeleine Albright.

That's the basic story behind Read My Pins: The Madeleine Albright Collection, an exhibit opening Sunday at the Denver Art Museum. A showcase of more than 200 pins from the former U.S. Secretary of State's own collection, the fabulous brooches signify much more than Albright's wicked sense of style. Each one also has a story attached, a hidden meaning culled from her life in the global political arena. The mixture of fashion and history is fascinating, and -- as you can see from the photo preview that follows -- also quite glamorous.

All photos by John Bigelow Taylor.

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Get in gear! Discover the DaVinci In You, an exhibit of machines and inventions created by Leonardo DaVinci, has moved into the former Virgin Records space in the Denver Pavilions. It's not quite the stuff of the nearby Victoria's Secret, but it's definitely a miraculous body of work.

The exhibit, on loan from the Museum of Leonardo DaVinci in Florence, features more than sixty handcrafted replicas of the Renaissance artist's creations, including "The DaVinci Mechanical Lion," a gift to the King of France that's making its first appearance in North America, and a near-life-sized replica of "The Last Supper" on display for the first time anywhere.

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Art, DaVinci Machines Exhibit, DaVinci Museum, Denver Pavilions, Exhibit, Inventions, Last Supper, Musuem

The West Coast punks are pogoing into town this spring at MCA Denver, Gildar Gallery, the Colorado Photographic Arts Center and other locations, for a series of shows falling under the aegis of Search & Destroy. So-named for the San Francisco 'zine or the '70s), the ring of satellite shows came to rest Friday night, March 29, 2012 at MCA, where a reception with live music opened to the public at 8 p.m. Read more about Search and Destroy at MCA.

Below are a few scenes from the opening and here's the full slide show: Search and Destroy opening at MCA.

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A model in a red Trophy dress with feather shoulders

Madrid, Paris, Denver.What do these three locations have in common? They are the three sites selected by the French fashion house to host Yves Saint Laurent: The Retrospective, which opened yesterday and runs through July 8 at the Denver Art Museum. As if you needed added incentive to see this important show, several local designers will be featured in the DAM gift shop for the duration of the YSL exhibit.

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Wikimedia Commons

"Think of it as American Idol meets Bill Nye the Science Guy," says David Grinspoon, astrobiology curator of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. This is his best description of FameLab, an international competition for young scientists that has made its way across the pond for the first time ever; Denver was one of only three cities that was asked to host. Tonight, FameLab will challenge beginning career scientists to communicate their passions to an audience of laypeople. Only one winner will move on.

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Britt Chester

Three weeks after the T.Rex Encounter exhibit vacated the gallery, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science is already featuring a new exhibit (free with museum admission!), Lizards & Snakes. It first launched at the American Museum of Natural History and includes live animals -- sixty of them (Including the lovely chameleon, pictured above). We stopped by the DMNS this week to check out the exhibit setup. And first things first: I am freaking terrified of snakes, with good reason. So if my ophidiophobic self could walk through this exhibit, y'all have no excuse. (I even touched the life-sized anaconda model this time!)

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Nice birdy! From IMAX "Flying Monsters 3-D"

Look! Up in the air! It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's a pterosaur! A what? When we think of prehistoric flying things, it's usually the more well-known feathered dinosaurs, such as archeopteryx, that we conjure in our minds. But the pterosaur, which reached unbelievable sizes and was related more closely to lizards, enjoyed remarkable success at life up in the air, where it monitored the heavens and chased ancient insects for eons.

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Video wall detail and photo by Kim Abeles.

Boulder's EcoArts puts on art shows that go heavy on the green, while mixing everything up into something that the community can touch and feel and -- hopefully -- get, because there's a message to be found in the midst of all the ecological hullabaloo. The invisible connectedness of things, which opens today at the CU Museum of Natural History, is just such an exhibition. A melding of art, science and the variable of transportation, the installation by Kim Abeles, with support from the museum, EcoArts, Envirotest, Manhattan Middle School and Spark: UCAR, examines the effect of transportation choices on the quality of the very air that Boulderites breathe.

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