[media-credit name="Brian T. McGinn" align="alignleft" width="400"][/media-credit]

Cari Smith, bird trainer at MCA holds one of the museum’s homing pigeons. Visitors who have approval can take home a bird and release it to return to its enclosure at the museum.

As part of a current exhibit, visitors to the Museum of Contemporary Art — Denver can leave with a homing pigeon and set it free to return to the museum.
Homing pigeons can be trained to fly over 400 miles to their original destination.
The exhibit Thinking About Flying was created by Jon Rubin, an artist from Pittsburg.
“He picked this museum because it has a great feature for a rooftop pigeon coop,” said Ed Moss ,a pigeon caretaker at the museum.
The pigeons are kept in an enclosure on the roof and are trained by the museum’s visitors, who with approval can bring the pigeons home with the promise of turning them loose to fly back to the museum.
Visitors who live within 30 miles of the museum can take home a pigeon in a carrying case on Friday through Sunday from
2 pm to 5 pm.
“By sharing in the responsibility of caring for the pigeons, the relationship between the visitors and the institution is made explicit and personal and a collective stake in the ongoing life of the artwork is initiated,” the Museum of Contemporary Art website says.
Some visitors think taking a pigeon home is an interesting concept.
“It would be a fun experience I think,” Sharon Novie-Greenburg said. “It’s a cool idea.” Novie-Greenburg is a Boston resident and visited the Museum of Contemporary Art while on vacation in Denver.
The small wooden pigeon loft where the pigeons live was donated by Buzz Corcillius. The loft once belonged to Corcillius’s father.
The museum’s pigeon caretakers let the birds out of the enclosure once a day and allow them to race around the building. Some of the pigeons come right back, and some wander around a bit.  Moss estimates that the birds can fly around 30 miles per hour. He says that they haven’t lost any pigeons in the past few months, because the birds get better at evading predators as they get older.
The pigeons were supplied by the Foothills Pigeon Racing Club. The exhibit runs through June 30.

Tags: art, auraia, brian mcginn, caitlin, Denver, MCA, metropolitan, pigeons, sievers, visitors