The Clyfford Still Museum is turning the shuttered Cap City Tavern building at 1247 Bannock Street into a multiuse space for lectures, dinners, and museum programs, expanding its footprint across the street from its main Golden Triangle gallery. The museum bought the brick structure in 2018 while Cap City Tavern still held the lease, and the bar's July 2025 closure after 20 years cleared the way for the renovation to begin.
According to the Denver Gazette, the museum purchased the property beneath the bar for $3 million in 2018, per Westword's reporting on the deal, anticipating the eventual end of Cap City Tavern's lease. The tavern had served as a longtime watering hole for Minnesota Timberwolves fans and theatergoers near City Hall, and its closure drew enough civic attention that Denver Mayor Mike Johnston cited it in his July 2025 State of the City address as an example of the foot-traffic and cost pressures squeezing independent restaurants, as reported by Denver Westword. Regular patrons were pointed toward the tavern's sister bar, Bannock Street Garage Bar, two blocks away, according to 9News.
A Museum Bound by Its Founder's Own Rules
The Clyfford Still Museum opened in November 2011 as an institution devoted solely to the art of Clyfford Still, a prominent pioneer of abstract painting who lived from 1904 to 1980, per the Denver Gazette's account. Still stipulated in his will that his works be held together in a museum devoted exclusively to his art, a mandate that has kept the main galleries pristine but left little room for the museum's growing slate of public programming.
Museum Director Joyce Tsai said the museum galleries will remain the exclusive home to Still's art, even as the institution experiments, pilots, and scales programs across the street in the new space, the Denver Gazette reports. Tsai took the museum's helm in August 2021, succeeding founding director Dean Sobel, after previously serving as chief curator at the University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art and earning her doctorate in art history from Johns Hopkins University, according to the Clyfford Still Museum.
From Barstools to Gallery Overflow
The museum's existing lobby holds just 70 people for lectures and celebratory events, the Denver Gazette notes, a capacity the museum has already stretched by opening its gallery space for meditation classes. The new multiuse space across the street will hold up to 90 people for lectures, 150 for seated dinners, and 200 for receptions, expanding what the museum can host without disturbing the galleries dedicated to Still's work.
Deputy Director and Chief Operating Officer Anna Boatwright said the move deepens the museum's commitment to the neighborhood and reflects belief in downtown Denver's future, per the Denver Gazette's reporting. Boatwright joined the museum in November 2021 after nine years managing capital projects in New York, including the Frick Collection's renovation with Selldorf Architects, according to MCW Projects.
Design Pedigree and What Comes Next
Architect Maria Cole of Studio Cole will lead design work for the renovation, per the news release cited by the Denver Gazette. Cole previously served as project architect for Daniel Libeskind's Denver Art Museum expansion and David Adjaye's Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, holding a Master of Global Studies from the University of Denver and a Bachelor of Architecture from Carnegie Mellon University, according to the Denver Architecture Foundation.
The museum is in the initial phases of the project and plans to secure permits before renovating the building, working with the city and its team to prepare the space for occupancy, the Denver Gazette reports. The museum hopes to open the new space in the new year. Once complete, it will become the dedicated future home of the Institute Residential Fellowship Program, which hosts six national fellows each July across studio art, early childhood education, and social enterprise, per the Denver Gazette and the Clyfford Still Museum's own program materials.
The museum sits within Denver's Golden Triangle Creative District, a state-certified arts district bounded by Colfax Avenue, Speer Boulevard, and Lincoln Street that also hosts the Denver Art Museum, History Colorado Center, and the Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art, according to Usaj Realty. Museum officials say the new space will continue the building's tradition as a gathering place while bringing more vibrancy and awareness to the block, according to the Denver Gazette. The Clyfford Still Museum holds approximately 3,125 pieces, representing 93 percent of Still's life's work, a collection gifted to the city of Denver after Patricia Still chose it over roughly 19 competing American cities in 2004, per the museum's founding history.
