Four of Denver International Airport's most recognizable artworks are coming out of storage and back onto Level 5 of the Jeppesen Terminal this month, marking a visible sign that the airport's sprawling Great Hall renovation is entering its final stretch. The pieces include Leo Tanguma's two-panel mural “In Peace and Harmony with Nature,” Gary Sweeney's “America, Why I Love Her,” Judith Baca's “La Memoria de Nuestra Tierra (Our Land Has Memory),” and Marcus Akinlana's “Mile High and Rising.”
Denver International Airport announced that several pieces of iconic artwork will return from storage as part of the Great Hall program, according to FOX31 Denver. Interim CEO Dave LaPorte said the artworks' return will excite passengers, and he framed the reinstallation as a sign that the Great Hall project is making real progress. Two additional installations, a tribute to Elrey Jeppesen and “Spirit of the People: A Native American Exhibition,” are expected to return this fall, per the same report.
A Mural With Its Own Mythology
Tanguma's “In Peace and Harmony with Nature” has been part of DEN's identity since the airport opened in 1995. The two-panel work depicts environmental destruction and suffering on one side and humanity coming together to rehabilitate the Earth on the other, and it has long been a central subject of online conspiracy theories about the airport, according to Uncover Colorado. The mural was placed into storage, along with its companion piece “Children of the World Dream of Peace,” while Great Hall construction proceeded around it.
Sweeney's “America, Why I Love Her” carries a very different kind of story. The artist worked as an airline baggage handler for 35 years, including at DEN, and his piece features two large U.S. maps decorated with photos of quirky roadside attractions and tourist stops inspired by family road trips, Uncover Colorado notes. It was originally installed on Level 5 near baggage claim back in 1994, before the airport even opened to the public.
Murals Rooted in Colorado History
Baca's 10-by-50-foot mural “La Memoria de Nuestra Tierra” was commissioned for DEN and completed in 2000. The UCLA professor and Chicana muralist depicted Hispano-Mexicano migration from El Paso to Colorado during the Mexican Revolution, weaving in her own family history to explore how land retains memory across generations, according to the Social and Public Art Resource Center.
Akinlana's 52-foot “Mile High and Rising,” completed in 1999, honors African American history in Colorado and the West. Painted on Dibond aluminum, it portrays historical figures including Barney Ford and Aunt Clara Brown, and it includes cantilevered relief figures depicting Black cowboys, miners, and business pioneers, per 3A Composites USA.
Funding the Airport's $12 Million Art Collection
DEN's public art didn't happen by accident. Under Denver's One Percent for Art municipal ordinance, established in the late 1980s, capital projects over $1 million must set aside 1% of their construction budgets for public art, a mechanism that has helped build the airport's collection to an estimated value of $12 million as of 2025, according to The Washington Post. That same ordinance funded a newer addition: in June 2025, DEN installed “It's Not What You Take, It's What You Bring Back” by Denver artist Thomas “Detour” Evans, a 26-foot, three-ton sculpture of nearly 200 suspended pastel-colored suitcases in Concourse B, paid for through the airport's gate expansion budget.
The murals' return is tied directly to the broader Great Hall Program, a $2.1 billion multi-phase modernization of the Jeppesen Terminal. The final $1.3 billion Great Hall Completion phase is expected to wrap by the end of 2027, according to Engineering News-Record. As part of that modernization, DEN relocated passenger security screening from Level 5 to Level 6, opening a new 17-lane West Security Checkpoint in February 2024 and, as Hoodline reported on a Great Hall milestone, a matching 17-lane East Security Checkpoint last August. Moving screening to Level 6 freed up Level 5 for meeting spaces and, now, restored public art.
Built for Growth That Kept Coming
The scale of the renovation reflects just how far DEN has outgrown its original design. The Jeppesen Terminal was designed initially for 50 million annual passengers, but the airport served 82.3 million travelers in 2023 and is now pursuing its Vision 100 plan to accommodate 100 million annual passengers by 2028, with an eye toward 120 million by 2045, per Engineering News-Record's reporting.
The art's return also arrives amid a leadership transition at the airport. Longtime CEO Phil Washington's retirement took effect earlier this month, as Hoodline previously reported in its piece on Washington's planned departure, leaving Dave LaPorte as interim CEO overseeing this phase of the Great Hall program. For travelers who have passed through Jeppesen Terminal for decades, the murals' reappearance on Level 5 offers a familiar landmark returning just as the airport moves closer to closing out one of the largest construction projects in its history.
