A 35-foot high sculpture of a broom and dustpan made of painted metal greets visitors at the base of the “prow” of the new addition to Denver’s Art Museum. The work, by artists Coosje van Bruggen and Claes Oldenburg, offers a double incongruity. Art elevates a commonplace household task to monumental civic status here. And my distant vantage point creates enormous scale incongruity by contrasting the huge sculpture and the even larger museum building to the tiny figures walking below them.

(You can read Oldenburg’s own thoughts on the sculpture at http://www.oldenburgvanbruggen.com/bigsweep.htm )