June 01, 2026
Two ghostly faces float over a reflecting pond, nearly nose to nose in silent contemplation. These metal-mesh heads are the work of Barcelona artist Jaume Plensa, whose exhibition A New Humanism is at Denver Botanic Gardens through September 7. I stopped by one evening to see it.
I’ve admired Plensa’s work in Houston at Rice University and Buffalo Bayou Park, so I was excited to see more in Denver.
Plensa’s serene faces appear throughout the garden, including these rendered in cast bronze from carven oak trunks.
“By rooting these contemplative faces in trees, Plensa illustrates how each human being is an inseparable part of the natural world,” reads a sign.
For a self-portrait, Plensa went in a different direction — no face or body at all. Here’s his Self-Portrait with Music, placed at the garden’s amphitheater where concerts are held in summer.
To see the rest of the exhibit, we headed inside to the Freyer–Newman Center galleries, an impressive art space for a botanic garden.
More monumental faces are displayed here, along with a haunting series of mixed-media portraits.
Letters spelling “desire” dangle from a ladle and are cast in shadow below.
Letters play a key role in much of Plensa’s art. His silver alphabet figures were familiar to me from previous works I’ve seen.
A sign explains:
“Many of the works…feature die-cut letters welded together to create abstract human forms. Selected from eight different alphabets, Plensa uses these letters to represent cultures from across the globe and symbolize the richness that emerges from cross-cultural connection. These works are also a metaphor for how every person matters — just as single letters gain meaning when they form words or stories, individuals come together to create families, communities, and humanity as a whole.”
In one gallery, a surreal sight — alphabet figures riding clouds of letters, floating in a dream-world rush-hour commute, drifting toward a common destination.
Faceless and anonymous, their bodies and vehicles of far-flung alphabets evoke our shared humanity.
The exhibition is well worth a visit. Go see it this summer if you can.
To see my earlier post about the gardens at Denver Botanic, click here.
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