The Denver International Airport Conspiracy Theories Art Robert Blaskiewicz

Photo by flickr user tvol

If you are at all familiar with modern American conspiracy theories, you volition know something nigh the Denver International Airport (DIA). The master terminal, designed past Fentress Bradburn Architects and completed in 1995, is striking, cutting a serrated line in the sky, a visual repeat of the surrounding mountains on the horizon.

Somehow, the conspiratorial earth has convinced itself that, to use Richard Dreyfus's phrase as he sculpts his mashed potatoes into a replica of the Devil'southward Tower, the Denver International Airport "means something." What exactly information technology means is unclear, but conspiracy theorists know its significant is sinister. Numerous hypotheses about the facility'southward existent purpose have been proposed, most of them rooted in the assertion that the truth is to be institute hole-and-corner in the bowels of the drome. This chemical element of the conspiracy seems to stem from a misinterpretation of events surrounding DIA'southward construction. Starting time is the extensive excavation, construction, and inexplicable (to conspiracy theorists) reburial of tunnels on the site, which now house the airport's rail arrangement. 2nd, price overruns on the order of $2 billion raised eyebrows and left conspiracy theorists wondering where all that actress coin was going.

The explanations that conspiracy theorists have offered range from the absurd to the fifty-fifty more absurd: DIA is the dwelling of the global shadow authorities of Illuminati/Masons/New World Order; DIA is the site of a future FEMA concentration camp; it sits atop an hush-hush city that is in turn continued to a network of other secret cities populated by aliens. One idea that seems be on the ascendance is an assertion fabricated by governor-wrestler Jesse Ventura that DIA will exist a refuge for global elites during a world-broad ending, not unlike the "arks" seen in the nigh unwatchable movie 2012.

According to conspiracy theorists, the fundamental to discerning the conspiracy and understanding the real purpose of the airport is the artwork found throughout the building.¹ Ii of the richest sources of clues are a pair of murals by Leo Tanguma, "The Children of World Dream of Peace" and "In Peace and Harmony with Nature," both of which are found nigh the baggage claim area. These two pieces are diptychs, each consisting of a small panel and a much longer console. While each smaller panel portrays a truly dystopian earth of destruction and disuse, the much larger panels brandish celebratory and vibrant symbolism suggestive of a utopian vision of the time to come.

On a contempo long layover at DIA, I made a indicate of studying the Tanguma murals. I first came upon "The Children of the World Dream of Peace" and constitute it utterly enormous.

Details from "The Children of the Globe Dream of Peace". Photos by Susan Gerbic

I stood back to run into how people reacted to the mural. Near did non look up, but virtually ane in 200 travelers would pause, shake his head, and motility on. I approached 1, a slim African American human who looked like he was in his tardily twenties. He agreed to an interview on the status that I did not tape his voice or requite his existent name. I will call him Jim.

"This is like a concentration camp," he said, pointing to the smaller of the two panels in the diptych. And it's true: the smaller console looks a footling like a poster for a Holocaust moving-picture show. A ghastly military figure in a gas mask dominates the scene, striking downward a dove of peace with a savage-looking scimitar. Backside him, a line of dispossessed people shuffles off incessantly into the altitude. Jim pointed to the children lying on the ground virtually the anxiety of the faceless soldier. "I mean, who puts dead children in a painting? That'due south sick."

"I don't call up that they are dead, actually," I said. "I call back they are asleep." I pointed out a piffling annotation painted into i corner of the mural, near the sleeping children. The note reads:

I was one time a little child who longed for other worlds. But I am no more a child for I accept known fear. I have learned to detest…. How tragic, then, is youth which lives with enemies, with gallows ropes. Yet, I still believe I but sleep today, that I'll wake up, a child again, and start to laugh and play.

The quote is attributed to a xiv-year quondam who died in December of 1943 at Auschwitz. "Expect," I began. "You see these sleeping kids? They are literally dreaming of a peaceful world." All of the of import themes of the piece, the contrast of state of war and peace and the dream motif, are introduced in the quote, serving as a primal for interpreting the mural. "Information technology's all about yearning for peace," I said.

Jim was doubtful. We drifted over to the other panel, and he pointed to all the children and noted that many bear weapons. "That makes them soldiers, right?"

"Just they are taking the swords and beating them into ploughshares. That'south a biblical reference. Information technology's not subtle!" I laughed.

Jim shook his head. "That's what they want you to call up." He pointed to the grinning, happy children. "See that? That's the antichrist. The antichrist is going to hope u.s.a. a globe of peace, only he is going to give us that," he said, gesturing toward the gray panel.

"How do you know this?" I asked, and he gave me some quotes from Revelation. Just he finished with a curious statement: "Also, nobody who works here, if yous ask them, will talk about the conspiracy."

Finally, something that we tin can put to the examination, I thought. "Do y'all desire to go inquire someone?"

He stepped back and crossed his arms, as if it had never occurred to him that someone might actually get enquire. In a moment he shook his head. "No. No." His unease was clear, and I told him I wouldn't delay him any longer. I went to talk to the people at the information booth.

When I reached the booth, I asked the woman behind the desk-bound if she could tell me about the conspiracy theories, and I'll exist damned if she wouldn't talk to me well-nigh it! Was Jim right?

Not exactly. They gave me the contact information for the media office. It was clear by the way she rolled her optics when I mentioned the conspiracy theories that I was not the first person to ask about them.

I headed over to meet the other mural, "In Peace and Harmony with Nature."

Details from "In Peace and Harmony with Nature". Photos by Susan Gerbic

There I met traveller Matt Brown, a new resident of Denver who was encountering the murals of DIA for the first time. I asked him why he was interested in the murals.

"I was just interested considering my dad merely sent me an electronic mail near some of these unlike murals, and I said that I didn't even notice. So on my way back I'm going check [them] out and see what the bargain is."

"And so, what's your first impression?" I asked.

"I don't see anything wrong with this one. I mean, peace and harmony with nature. There [are a] whole bunch of dissimilar nationalities and creatures. I don't know what that is in the heart," he said, pointing to a psychedelic-looking constitute that dominates the heart of the mural. "But information technology looks similar that they are all having a good fourth dimension.

"This [panel] over here," he went on, "[is] a little different. There are flames upward here, there'southward a dead chetah, and so a bunch of expressionless people. And so I don't really know what to brand this one is trying to say, to tell you the truth, simply it'southward pretty harsh!" he said, laughing.

"Is there some sort of Egyptian god of death somewhere also?" Matt asked me.

"Anubis?"

"That's what I was told."

I shrugged. "I've been told all sorts of things." It turns out that the figure of Anubis was really non function of the art collection at DIA. The figure was only a temporary exterior marketing brandish promoting "The Treasures of the Pharaohs" exhibit, which was at the Denver Art Museum from July 2010 to Jan 2011. It was not evidence that ancient mystery cults associated with the Masons were unabashedly announcing their resurgence.

Matt asked nigh the other landscape's location, and I showed him where it was at the other stop of the terminal. When we reached information technology, I introduced myself to a young couple, Lauren and Tom. I asked Lauren what she thought.

"I've heard about these [murals]," she said, "but … they accept never defenseless my eye 'cause I was e'er on a mission to get to a airplane. Simply today because we were here and only casually doing a choice-upward without whatsoever fourth dimension constraint, [and so] I wanted to take notice. They're very strange; they are kind of confusing. They're…odd. Mass destruction and children and weapons…Information technology makes no sense to me."

"This statue guy over here," Tom jumped in, "I mean, over here he's in charge, and over hither he's dead."

"I've seen little excerpts online about this thing," Lauren said, "and it's very foreign and I've simply never really been able to understand it. Then this is really the first time I've looked at it in whatever kind of detail."

"What do y'all call up of the conspiracy theories that environment these?" I asked Lauren.

"I've heard a lot of dissimilar conspiracies, you know, preparing for mass destruction, that kind of thing, going underground. I've heard about those, specially about this airport."

"So, what do you call back well-nigh those?"

She paused. "Sure, why non? We've got NORAD not far from here. It makes sense that…"

Tom chimed in. "We're at a high elevation here. And so at that place is more room to dig, if yous desire. What better place to come to hide someone?"

"Wouldn't NORAD'due south presence make the area a potential target or at least a niggling more than unsafe?" I asked.

"If you become downwardly far enough, it doesn't affair," he replied. "Plus this is an airport, so if you have to fly Air Force One here for protection…."

"Well," Lauren cut in, "I'm sure that there are plenty of locations which have hugger-mugger cities and things in them."

"Do y'all think of information technology every bit beingness a refuge for the President?" I asked.

Tom: "It could be. I mean, why not?"

Lauren: "I know they shut NORAD downwardly a few years agone from having visitors, so….There's probably places all over the world that have underground cities.

Tom: "If you can afford it, you tin can come up here and live. If you can't, you're screwed."

I asked them why the conspirators had put and then many hints around the airport if they wanted the secret city to remain surreptitious.

"You just stand up around here and look, and people don't even stop and find this," Tom replied. "It's blatant. Information technology's in your face. You walk right past it."

Lauren nodded in grim agreement. "It's denial, I guess."

My layover in Denver was not long enough for me to chase downwards all of the art associated with the conspiracy theories, and so when I returned to Atlanta I contacted Matt Chasansky, the Art Programme Managing director at the Denver International Drome. I interviewed Matt and Jenny Schiavone, a representative from the DIA media office, in a briefing phone call.

In recent years, I have seen lots of big art installations in airports like San Francisco'due south and Atlanta's. Is information technology a tendency, and if so how does DIA fit into that trend?

Matt: Well, the way nosotros fit into that trend is that we started the trend. When they began planning for the aerodrome in the early 1990s, they very quickly gravitated to artists in the process in a very profound way, I retrieve. At that place had been public art integrated into buildings earlier, only the Denver Airport was the get-go i to do it on such a massive scale. I recollect nosotros had twelve artists in the room with the pattern team at the very early on stages of the design of the airport, and the idea was to have these projects that are equally a office of the compages and the experience made there. And that was in the early '90s. Information technology was 1 of the concluding fully built out airports before 9/eleven, and since then there's been [an] interesting discussion almost borough spaces and what that ways, and art … has been a large office of that [discussion]. Simply a lot of the airports, including Denver, are city buildings, municipal buildings, so in Denver that triggers a pct for fine art work. On the one paw, like I said, there is a push towards fine art in civic spaces, and on the other hand it's a mandatory thing to put art in airports because of how we have designed our public art program.^two

How were artists or works selected for the airport?

Matt: It's never one person selecting artwork. Nosotros form selection panels in lodge to take customs representation and transparency and republic in deciding how these things go. It'south really a community-wide effort and never an private deciding what art should exist, how public money should exist spent on fine art. So, when the aerodrome was built, a series of these community panels were assembled project past project in order to make up one's mind who are the best to work with and then once identified the airport contracted with the individual artists and began the design procedure.³

Are those records public?

Matt: Yeah…. All of the public records are open to scrutiny.

Jenny: I don't know where those public records alive, but since we are a government agency nosotros are role of the [Colorado] Open Records [Act]. So it's certainly something we could help you detect.⁴

Why has Leo Tanguma's work attracted the attention of and then many conspiracy theorists?

Matt: They are hitting, and Leo Tanguma is known for social and political subject matter [which he portrays] in a very upward-front end manner. Not the to the lowest degree of which [are] his choices of color and his format and the way he brings the mode, the arroyo of the WPA murals, and the Mexican visual realists to contemporary narrative. So all that comes together. Equally far as not being subtle in whatever way, I think that'southward quite intentional but because what Leo chose to exercise, what he proposed to exist in … his two pieces. In one landscape the subject thing was overcoming war, violence, and aggression. In the other [it was] was overcoming the challenges of the environment. In both cases, he felt that you tin can't pull your punches on subjects like that. You lot don't talk near war with images that are anything less than powerful and emotional and striking. In social club for him to consummate his narrative, what he gave the states was a landscape, in the case of "The Children of the Earth Dream of Peace," a smaller panel on one side that is that metaphor for state of war and is very direct because its subject affair is dealt with in a very passionate manner and the solution equally so. [In] the larger panel we see the children of the world gathering … the swords of war and destroy[ing] them in the symbolic end of violence, [which comes from] a biblical verse, beating the swords into plowshares…. On the ane hand I become information technology; when people say that they are very unsubtle works to have in an airport, that's very true. The reason is not considering of the airport or the way they were selected. The reason is because you lot're dealing with serious subject matter here. You can't do anything curt of being very serious most his approach.

What conspiracy theories have you heard about the airport?

Matt: I recall it'due south more "what conspiracy theories haven't we heard about the airport?" Basically, you name it. You proper noun a conspiracy theory and somehow we seem to exist connected to it.

It's one of the exciting parts near the story, the culture, that has built up effectually these; … we can fit into pretty much whatsoever story you want to tell because the assumptions and the misinterpretations have gotten wilder and wilder…. It's a very plastic narrative that'south been created. Simply probably the most common is that there'south an secret city and that information technology is a part of a network of underground cities that the government or some sort of shadow international regime or aliens are building, depending on your perspective…or Masons…. DIA just seemed to fit that story.

I met a passenger who said that if you ask an employee most the conspiracy theory, they won't tell you anything. I asked, and she didn't.

Matt [laughing]: I know there'due south no airport policy nigh not talking about the conspiracy theory. I think that some people are and then flabbergasted by the attention that people are paying to that that they don't know what to say and cull not to say anything.

What are the positive and negative aspects of having conspiracy theories associated with your collection?

Matt: The positive is that everyone talks about it. It'due south a civilisation of itself now, and in that location'due south always more than discussion, people all around the world paying attention to this art collection. And once yous get past the irreconcilable conversation of "Is there or is at that place not going to exist an end of the world in 2012 and will DIA be the majuscule of the new world order" … you can actually talk about what art ways and how the creative person conveys the information and how artists when they create and put their whole abilities into telling a story, they hand it over to the people looking at the art. And they actually do sacrifice a lot of their own personal endeavor to what people bring to these sculptures, to these pieces of artwork. Then that super valuable conversation virtually what public art is and how we should properly spend this money and how things are selected is really skilful to accept. And that's the big positive.

I think the negative is [the difficulty of knowing] how to educate people because the ability of a single person with a web log taking a picture of a corner of i of our murals and interpreting that—that has then much more resonance than anything official that we could practice, that telling the other side of the story is a big claiming.

How take yous tried to tell that story?

Jenny: …We accept tried to use social media to our benefit in that area. We have a very popular Facebook page and we do become a lot of commenters who are conspiracy theorists and people who are conspicuously just post-obit us because … they want to meet what the Illuminati is up to, what the aliens are up to underneath the airdrome, that sort of affair. It's been fun for u.s.a. to open upwards that dialogue between the public and the aerodrome, where we'll go and post a photo and a brusk story about a new art work, and it's fun to come across the comments roll in. You may run into a few comments that are accusing us of starting another conspiracy or playing into a conspiracy theory, only then immediately following that you'll meet a chat starting with other fans who are trying to explicate what the artwork is. That actually goes fifty-fifty beyond our art plan.

Would yous host a piece of artwork that addressed the conspiracy theory?

Matt: We don't really dictate what artists should do. The artists come to our selection panels proposals based on the nature of the site…. We want things to exist very site specific and serious….The arroyo on how to spend the public money on the art is … a serious undertaking.

Who runs the airport operation on a daily basis? Take you lot been to the areas singled out by conspiracy theorists?

Jenny: Nosotros definitely have, and I would say Matt has more then than me. [Westward]e're a city agency, we're office of the urban center and county of Denver. And the employees who run the airport are all City and County of Denver employees. We have about 1,100 employees hither who brand up our operations team, our maintenance team. Matt and I, our marketing, PR, and finance divisions, those are all Urban center employees. [There are] another xxx,000+ people who work out here for the airlines, concessionaires, and other vendors who do business with the airport. Just in terms of who runs the airport, it's essentially the City and County of Denver Department of Aviation. I have been in many if non all of the places that the conspiracy theorists are addicted of "calling out," and I've never seen anything that was even remotely suspicious looking. There take been [people] who have asked me that [question], and I have given them that same respond. [T]hey of course think that I am brainwashed and I'm supposed to say that, but I can 100 per centum honestly say that.

Matt: It's interesting, I can't give a bout in the airport without at least ane person attaching themselves to the tour and starting to inquire questions about that. [R]eally it'south fascinating that there's zippo that you can say. There'due south not [any] show you can provide, there are no assurances you tin can give that the conspiracy theory is wrong, considering … obviously it's going to be a comprehend up or brainwashing or chips installed in brains.

Where exercise you folks plan to be in December, oh, around the 21st?

Matt: I'm going to accept a stock of food in my office, merely non for whatever particular reason.

Jenny: I think I volition be on Christmas holiday, only who knows?

Notes

1. For a typical taste of DIA conspiracy theories, run into the Vigilant Citizen website, which specializes in misinterpreting artwork. ↩

two. According to the Denver Office of Cultural Diplomacy, since 1988, Denver's Public Art Program directs that "1% of whatsoever capital letter improvement project over $1 million undertaken by the Metropolis be set aside for the inclusion of art in the design and construction of these projects". ↩

three. The complete process of selecting artwork for capital comeback projects is outlined in exquisite detail in a brochure produced past the Denver Function of Cultural Affairs, which tin be downloaded in PDF format. For a full account of the procedure by which Tanguma'due south murals and all the other works in the airport were selected, encounter pages 10–16. ↩

iv. If you are in Denver and would like to examine the records relating to any of the fine art in the Denver International Airport, visit the Drome Public Tape FAQ folio. ↩

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