A new exhibition open now at Denver’s History Colorado Center takes attendees back to the 1990s.
Like many throwback exhibits, organizers hope to help visitors tap into some comforting nostalgia. But as another fraught year creeps toward its end, the new ‘90s exhibit also aims to remind people of the resilience that guided Coloradans through that tumultuous decade.
“We seem to be hit with a barrage of world-changing events that could be overwhelming for people, and the idea is to show that this is actually a continuum,” said Jason Hanson, History Colorado’s Chief Creative Officer. “You lived through technological anxiety and political tensions and constant world-changing events already in the nineties. You survived that and you came out stronger.”
The 1990s were a pivotal decade for technological, social and political events. From the fall of the Soviet Union to the OJ Simpson trial and anxieties about whether Y2K would end the world, the era ushered in the Internet, mobile phones, and, of course, the Macarena.
“The tagline of the exhibit is, ‘The last decade before the future.’ And the idea is that the ‘90s was a bridge decade, a sort of pivotal decade that brought us from an analog past into a digital future,” said Hanson.
The exhibit grounds its ‘90s reflections in a snapshot of Denver as it was. It takes visitors back to a time when the city’s reputation was continuing to transition from a cow town to a major metropolis.
In 1990 just 467,549 people were living in Denver. By the year 2000, Denver’s growth had outpaced the national average as nearly 100,000 more people moved to the metro.
During that time, the first Chipotle opened, the Rockies welcomed their first fans to Coors Field and a pair of polar bear cubs stole the hearts of children across Colorado.
“1994 is a really big year for Denverites because we get Klondike and Snow. They were two baby polar bears who were abandoned by their mother and hand-raised by Denver Zoo staff. And if you lived in Denver in the ‘90s, it was nightly news updates, merchandise everywhere,” said Hanson. “They were the biggest celebrities in Denver.”
The exhibit also features national relics, like President Bill Clinton’s saxophone, a mini-Blockbuster video store and era-defining outfits from artists like Eminem and athletes like Kristi Yamaguchi.
While the world is in a different state than it was three decades ago, Hanson said reflecting on the past can remind people that what they’re facing now is not that dissimilar from what they faced then.
“The technological shifts, economic shifts, cultural shifts that happened in the ‘90s planted the seeds for the modern world, the future that we live in today,” he said.
History Denver’s ‘90s exhibit will be open until October 2025.
