Foremost museum director to lead conversation about art fitness

Adam Lerner, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver, says he wants to capture the spirit of art-and that this may even be more important, in his view, than the art itself.

"Lerner teaches us that if we can understand how contemporary art conveys meaning, that's actually more important than understanding the meaning of any particular work, artist or movement. Lerner is all about teaching viewers to use their fishing pole, not giving them fish," says Kevin Buist, Artist Relations Director at ArtPrize.

Lerner will be speaking at "How I Learned to Look at Art" this Saturday evening, just as the downtown area prepares to host hundreds of thousands of visitors that will be doing just that-and judging it while they're there.

Along with talking about his own personal journey to having a healthy attitude toward art, Lerner will talk about the principles behind Art Fitness, a new learning program for ArtPrize 2012 that includes tours and discussions that is billed as a "no-frills approach to discussing contemporary art."

"We're not interested delivering a list of what art is good, [but instead] we want to equip people with the ability to discern why something is good, then let them use that ability on their own," explains Buist. "You can never learn to look without actually doing it. You need to get in front of artworks and start asking them questions, and that's what Art Fitness is designed to do. And we think it's a perfect compliment to ArtPrize."

Lerner's talk will kick off the interaction with Art Fitness. The event will be at 5:00 p.m. Saturday evening in the ArtPrize HUB (41 Sheldon Blvd SE). The event is free to the public.