Denver Mayor Mike Johnston has a simple answer for why he attended Yale, why he named his first-born son after a playwright, and why he spends each morning and night reading Pulitzer Prize-winning books like Colson Whitehead’s “The Nickel Boys.”
“I’m an arts nerd at heart,” said the 49-year-old Democrat, who hurried into his office recently, a few minutes late for an interview after dropping his daughter off at school. “I was very active in theater a lot of my early life. My dad owned an art gallery, and I ran an arts school as a principal” — the Mapleton Expeditionary School of the Arts in Thornton.
“It’s been a fundamental part of shaping my life.”
But more than six months into his new administration, Johnston hasn’t shown his artistic leanings. In fact, he’s still in the thick of his transition, having taken office in June, and is naming department heads, negotiating budgets, and working to fulfill a promise to take 1,000 unhoused people off the streets. That’s in addition to tackling a dramatic and growing migrant crisis in the city, wrestling with a hollowed-out urban core, and negotiating with city council members.
A close look at his budget and campaign policies shows that there is a bridge between the arts and his plans to revitalize downtown, however: Johnston believes that taking unhoused people off the streets will encourage more would-be audiences to see central Denver concerts and Broadway shows. He said that his affordable housing goals aren’t just for the indigent, but for teachers and artists, who often don’t make enough money to afford to live in the city.
“I went to the ‘Cowboy’ exhibit at MCA Denver a few weeks ago, which was incredible, then did the Broncos game in the afternoon,” he said. “That’s a great Denver Sunday. That’s why it’s our commitment to make downtown a live, work, play and art community.
“We have some of the best theater you can find anywhere in America. We just have to remind people that it’s right outside their front door,” he added.
But Johnston’s approach to the arts has been light on specifics, and arts boosters, like Ru Johnson, a veteran Denver publicist and cultural advisor, are eager for details.
“I’ll be really curious to find out how the new mayor’s administration is going to connect with the arts,” she said, and to “help identify what’s not working and direct allocated resources toward those solutions.”
Money matters
Before the pandemic, Denver’s arts economy was booming. Not only did economic activity set a record in 2019 with around $2.3 billion of arts spending, according to the Colorado Business Committee for the Arts, but as of 2020, the Denver-Aurora-Lakewood area was first in the nation for arts attendance among 35 major metro areas. In other words, Denverites were going to more plays, concerts and dance performances than anywhere else in the country.
The city’s attendance rate at performing arts events was 76.8% that year, compared to a national average of 48.5%, according to the National Endowment for the Arts. Denver was also first in arts-exhibitions attendance, with 55.3% compared to the 22.7% national average, the NEA reported.
The pandemic decimated all of that activity. But under the direction of Ginger White Brunetti, the former director of the city’s Arts & Venues department, Denver quickly climbed back up the charts.
In 2021, for example, Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison was named the world’s most-attended concert venue in a study from Billboard Magazine. In 2022, Red Rocks hosted 1.6 million event attendees, nearly a third from out of state. Together, those visitors spent $305 million in metro Denver before and after concerts, according to BBC Research and Consulting.
In 2022, outgoing Denver Mayor Michael Hancock directed $1 million in federal funds to support the reactivation of city-owned venues (Red Rocks, Colorado Convention Center and others), along with $200,000 for the city agency Denver Arts & Venues’ concert series. His budget that year devoted $54.6 million overall to Denver Arts & Venues.
In the fiscal year ending 2022 — Arts & Venues matches the calendar year — the city agency saw its budget rise nearly $15 million to $68.5 million. However, the city isn’t spending that much on paintings and sculptures; much of it goes to the upkeep of historic structures, staffing, and administration. And despite its lines on the mayor’s budget, Arts & Venues is not actually supported by the general fund and is run on its own revenue streams — mostly from events at city-owned venues such as Red Rocks, Performing Arts Complex, and Denver Coliseum.
In other words, Hancock wasn’t choosing to give the agency that much money — nor will Johnston.
Instead, the budget increases during Hancock’s last two years are a result of the rebound in the entertainment industry from the effects of the pandemic. (While economic activity declined significantly during the COVID years, it is once again setting records, according to the Colorado Business Committee for the Arts, which is estimating $2.6 billion in activity for metro Denver’s cultural sector in 2023, up 13.6% from 2019.)
But some of that credit for Denver’s thriving arts scene still goes to Hancock, who roundly supported arts and culture programs during his 12-year tenure, following a similar track record from former mayor and now-U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper.
“Hancock was a supporter from all the way back when he was on council,” said David Ehrlich, executive director of the Denver Theatre District, a private nonprofit that includes a 16-block part of downtown. “This new administration has the benefit of starting on firm footing from that.”
A touch-and-go beginning
But some people feel like Johnston is off to a bad start. For instance, city council member Kevin Flynn protested after Johnston chose not to retain White Brunetti, the former Denver Arts & Venues head and 18-year city employee. Originally appointed by Hancock, Brunetti grew revenue and attendance during the record-breaking years leading up to 2020, and then oversaw Denver’s unusually strong arts and entertainment recovery after the pandemic.
Instead, Johnston named Gretchen Hollrah as the city’s new arts leader — a job she will split with her duties as Johnston’s deputy chief operating officer. Hollrah will be expected to continue growing arts attendance and revenue in addition to confronting a $20 million funding gap for an ongoing project — the restoration of the historic May Bonfils Stanton Theater, formerly known as Loretto Heights, which has already absorbed $30 million in voter-approved tax revenue.
“It was unnecessary to make a change at Arts & Venues while the former executive director was doing a very good job managing the largest city investment ever to occur in southwest Denver,” Flynn said. “However, I am pleased that the mayor has appointed someone, as I requested of him, with extensive experience in managing large capital projects, and in managing arts venues.”
“We have an enormous amount of work that continues from one administration to the next,” Hollrah wrote in an email to The Denver Post, “including investing in our venues such as Red Rocks and the Denver Performing Arts Complex, creating opportunities for artists and arts organizations, and supporting free and low-cost cultural events for Denver residents and visitors.” She also said downtown grant programs and the Loretto Heights project were priorities.
Johnston said he respected Brunetti’s past accomplishments, but that Hollrah was the right person for this moment.
“She is quite proven and it shows us the interwoven nature of things, (such as) the revitalization of downtown,” he said. “That’s what makes you want to come to Denver: Theater, sporting events, dinners. So it makes sense that the people who lead those sectors should help us lead that revitalization.”
Moving forward
Johnston’s $4 billion 2024 budget plan that was approved by Denver City Council includes $67.6 million for Arts & Venues — a slight decrease from the 2023 budget.
Along with Downtown Denver Partnership and Arts & Venues, Johnston in October also said he would provide metro Denver with $350,000 in grant funding to “enliven downtown neighborhoods.” The $500 to $25,000 grants will help “celebrate the vibrancy, history, arts and culture, and future of our city,” officials wrote.
“We’re still very much committed to our (arts) plan,” he said. “But we have to sit down in January and start to lay out the big ones. … I know that doesn’t happen naturally. You have to help build the ecosystem to do that. But we think there is a great ecosystem that is already up and running here, and we just need to help foster and cultivate it.”
For starters, Johnston wants to create a campus to house a permanent Artists-in-Residence program, which would offset the high rents forcing out artists and keeping new ones from moving here. He would give them a roof and a stipend and connect them with citywide canvases, literal or figurative, to share their work. The city would play the role of business agent, promoting the artists and making sure people see their art.
It has succeeded in Boston and other cities, he’s said, while noting that Denver already counts about 100,000 creatives in music, theater, dance, and visual arts, according to Denver Arts & Venues. During his campaign, Johnston estimated that the fellowship project would cost $10 million, to be sourced from philanthropists “or in-kind land contribution from community leaders.”
However, giving and attendance are down in Denver’s fine and performing arts community. “Although we benefited from generous government and local funding during the pandemic, which is no longer available, we are still feeling the after-effects of the pandemic,” wrote Jada Dixon and Jeanne Bragg, artistic and managing directors, respectively, of Denver’s Curious Theatre Company, in an email. “Audiences have been slower to come back to the theatre than many of us had hoped.”
Johnston also has said he’d like to start a city-run book club and to create housing for young painters and musicians and actors. And he wants young people to have access to the same quality of theater that he had. Growing up in Vail, Johnston first saw August Wilson’s “Fences” during an eighth grade visit to DCPA. That moment changed his life, he said, making him into a theater devotee.
“Through high school, that’s what inspired me,” he said. “I knew nothing about Yale before I went there. The only reason I wanted to go was because I knew every one of these August Wilson plays I’d seen at DCPA opened at the Yale Rep, where August Wilson’s close friend was a director.” (Note: Johnston gave his son Emmet the middle name August in tribute).
After that — and Harvard Business School — Johnston found himself directing “Fences” and Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson” as a first-year teacher. Since then he’s attended dozens more Denver Center and other theater events, in particular praising Denver Center Theatre Company’s version of “The Color Purple” from earlier this year (“I wept through about 60% of it,” he said). He counts friends from smaller theaters such as Buntport, he said, and creatives ranging from part-time performers to cultural nonprofit presidents.
“He and his family have always patronized the DCPA,” said Janice Sinden, president of DCPA and a former chief for staff for Mayor Hancock. “From what we’ve seen he is very favorable in supporting a very stable and robust arts and culture sector, so we want to support him in that as often as he wants to come (to the theater). … We’re a growing city and so it’s our responsibility to stay in the mayor’s line of sight and continue to explore what’s working and what’s not working.”
It remains to be seen whether Johnston’s arts policies will encourage central Denver’s revitalization. But he does talk about art with energy and heart. He said he makes a point to read every Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and nonfiction book, with a focus on works by BIPOC writers, and tries to stay up on Colorado’s gallery and museum scenes. He watches every Oscar-nominated movie with his family, he said. He even likes reading plays.
“I feel like if art helps us understand what the world ought to be like, then politics helps us try to build that world,” he said. “A lot of mayors in a lot of cities don’t see it that way. They see art as a byproduct that sort of happens from their deliberate strategy. We view it as something that has to be at the center of it.”
