Museum's new wing just a short walk from Santa Fe.

• Author: Schwab, Robert
• Position: Denver Art Museum - Brief article

Art and real estate prices are driving the economic makeover of Santa Fe Drive, but just a half mile away, those two forces come together beautifully again in the new, dramatically designed expansion of the Denver Art Museum, which opens Oct. 7.

The $90.5 million, 146,000-square-foot expansion, called the Frederic C. Hamilton Building, after the chairman of the museum's board of directors, has been designed by world-famous architect Daniel Libeskind--his first completed building in the United States.

It will be open with the rest of the museum--which has been closed to move works of art into the expansion--throughout that Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 8, with a variety of events scheduled to celebrate completion of the project.

The expansion doubles the museum's gallery space, and 700 additional works of art from the museum's permanent collection will now be able to be displayed in the extra room. With 60,000 pieces, the museum can claim one of the largest collections of world art in the Western U.S.

Libeskind, whose practice is headquartered in New York, also designed a privately developed...