Friday

1) 3 p.m. Cultural campus

The Denver Art Museum, with its distinctively angular Daniel Libeskind-designed wing, anchors what has turned into the city’s museum quarter now that the Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art moved in two blocks away. The quirky museum (admission $10), which doubled its exhibition capacity, preserves the original studio of Vance Kirkland, who often painted suspended on straps above his canvases. Before reaching it, visitors pass through the encyclopedic collection of decorative pieces from Art Nouveau tapestries to postmodern sofas that crowd the walls and floors, salon-style. A moving union of art and architecture lies between the Denver Art Museum and the Kirkland in the Clyfford Still Museum (admission $10). Brad Cloepfil of Allied Works Architecture designed the minimalist, textured concrete building, with naturally lit galleries to house the nearly complete collection and archives of the abstract expressionist painter Clyfford Still.

2) 6:30 p.m. Destination dinner

Denver’s culinary mania is evident in brunch queues and difficult-to-get dinner reservations. Make one of those reservations well in advance for Tavernetta, a new, sophisticated Italian magnet from the group behind Frasca Food and Wine in nearby Boulder. To get to the tables, diners walk through the kitchen, a scenic appetizer to the chef Ian Wortham’s regional and seasonal dishes, which recently included homemade garganelli pasta with mushrooms and asparagus ($32) and roast quail with farro, chickpea and prosciutto ($28). No reservation? Try Tavernetta anyway. There’s a spacious lounge with fireside tables as well as numerous stools around the bar.