Visit Denver bills Night at the Museums as an evening event. More than a dozen institutions stay open late from 5 to 10 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 7, with free admission and free shuttles between them, according to the Visit Denver event page. The Clyfford Still Museum is free for a much longer stretch. Nov. 7 is also an SCFD Free Day, so its doors open free at 10 a.m. and stay that way until 10 p.m.

The event's 5 to 10 p.m. window is shorter than the free hours you can actually use across the whole first weekend of Denver Arts Week, which runs Nov. 6 through 15 with more than 200 events. Friday's art walks don't share a start time, and Saturday's free museum day starts in the morning on the Civic Center side. If you plan around those longer free-day hours, the 5 to 10 p.m. window can go to the places that are free only after dark.

Friday's Art Walks Start at Three Different Times

The First Friday Art Walks open Arts Week on Friday, Nov. 6, in five districts: RiNo, Tennyson/Berkeley, Lavender Hill, 40 West and the Art District on Santa Fe. Each one sets its own hours and its own focus.

The Santa Fe and 40 West hours above come from each district's standing monthly schedule, not from a Nov. 6 listing. If you're aiming for the start, check those two before you go. In Lavender Hill, the Denver Drag Showcase page lists Charlie's, Champagne Tiger, Clocktower Cabaret, Lavender Haus, Mile High Mary's, Wild Tulips and X Bar among the venues. The page doesn't give one combined schedule and leaves event details to the individual venues, so check with each venue for showtimes.

RiNo has two new dinner options this fall. Risica, a Milanese pizzeria and wine bar at 3463 Walnut St., opened in mid-October. Westword reported that nothing on the menu costs more than $20, and the restaurant is open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. La Vie En Rose, at 1336 27th St., opened in September with more than 120 Champagne bottles and small plates, according to Westword.

Saturday Opens on the Civic Center Side at 10 A.M.

Friday's earliest walks start before dark, and Saturday's free hours start even earlier. The Clyfford Still Museum and the Counterterrorism Education Learning Lab both pair Night at the Museums with an SCFD Free Day, so both are free from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Nov. 7. The Still's daytime schedule adds a free Maker Mornings family workshop on Movement and Sound from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and mini-tours at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Its current exhibitions are Still in Sound and Celebrating 15 Years: 15 New Paintings in 15 Months, which shows one Clyfford Still painting never seen before each month. The museum encourages advance reservations for free days and also welcomes walk-ins.

The Denver Art Museum's big ticketed show runs on a daytime clock as well. General admission is free during Night at the Museums, but DIVA, which features nearly 100 performers and has the DAM as its only U.S. venue, needs a separate ticket. The Arts Week offer is $15 for adults and $5 for ages 6 to 18, valid only on Nov. 7, with listed hours of 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. DIVA closes an hour before free admission ends, and its window opens seven hours before free admission begins. That makes the afternoon the easy time to see it before the 5 p.m. crowd arrives on the shuttles.

The Shuttle Map Runs Through the Denver Art Museum

Visit Denver's 2026 shuttle map shows seven routes from 5 to 10 p.m. Final shuttles leave every museum at 10 p.m.

The DAM stop is on five of the seven routes. It also covers the Clyfford Still Museum, The Kirkland, the CELL and the Center for Colorado Women's History. The Nature & Science museum comes next with four routes. Route E is the shortest loop at 14 minutes and links four museums within a short ride of each other. Route G is the long haul out to Wings Over the Rockies. The map gives round-trip times but not how often shuttles run, so budget for waiting at each stop.

That layout supports the daytime plan. If you see the Still, the CELL and DIVA before 5 p.m., you've covered the DAM cluster, and the evening shuttle hours can go to the spokes.

What Free Admission Covers at Each Museum

Free general admission covers less than the full building at several museums.

• Denver Botanic Gardens. Only the Freyer–Newman Center is open. The outdoor gardens and the Boettcher Memorial Tropical Conservatory are closed. Inside, there are art exhibitions, science chats, herbarium tours and library access.
• Denver Museum of Nature & Science. Admission is free from 5 to 10 p.m. A laser concert in the Gates Planetarium and documentaries in the Sturm Infinity Theater cost extra. Visit Denver mentions the temporary exhibition Changing Landscapes, but the museum's free-day policy says temporary exhibitions need a separate ticket, so ask at the door.
• Wings Over the Rockies. Admission is free, but the museum asks visitors to pre-register. The newest aircraft in the collection is the F-16 Viper, and MaxFlight simulators are part of the evening.
• The Kirkland at the Denver Art Museum. Free general admission includes the temporary shows Space Is the Place: Art & Design in the Atomic Age and Round the Clock: 24 Hours of Colorado in Prints.
• MCA Denver. Colorado Currents fills the whole museum, with more than 100 works by 28 artists who have ties to Colorado.
• Forney Museum of Transportation. Trains are open to walk through for this event only, and Big Boy No. 4005 is on view. Kids can make transportation-themed license plates while supplies last.

Normal hours at the Colorado History Museum, formerly the History Colorado Center, are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. Visit Denver lists it in the 5 to 10 p.m. lineup, with more than 15 exhibitions.

Two West-Side Stops Off the Shuttle Map

Dinosaur Ridge and the Morrison Natural History Museum are on the participant list but don't appear on any of the seven shuttle routes. They also lean hardest on darkness. Dinosaur Ridge plans to light its main tracksite with colored solar lights and run short guided shuttle tours with flashlights. It will likely decorate with an 1876 theme for Colorado's sesquicentennial. Morrison is setting up a "Dig at Night" station outside where visitors can try fossil tools, plus a behind-the-scenes tour of its research lab.

For a household on the west side of the metro, these two can fill the evening without any downtown parking. Neither one has a daytime version of what it's offering that night.

Saturday, From the First Free Hour to the Last Shuttle

1. 10:30 a.m. Maker Mornings at the Clyfford Still Museum, or the 11 a.m. mini-tour. The CELL, which shares the DAM shuttle stop, is free all day too.
2. Early afternoon. DIVA at the DAM with the $15 or $5 Nov. 7 ticket, well before its 9 p.m. close.
3. 5 p.m. Board Route E from the DAM for the Molly Brown House, Museo de las Americas and the Colorado History Museum. Museo is running a scavenger hunt with a one-page guide.
4. Later evening. Take Route B to MCA Denver and the Museum for Black Girls, where guests can add to a community "Love Letter" installation. Or ride Route G to Wings Over the Rockies if you've pre-registered.
5. By 10 p.m. Be on a shuttle, since the last departures leave every museum at that hour.

The rest of Arts Week runs through Nov. 15 with ticket deals. The DCPA roundup lists buy-one-get-one offers for the Colorado Symphony's Mozart Requiem and 25% off Macbeth at Opera Colorado.

We follow Denver's calendar closely because what happens near a home is part of what it's worth. If Arts Week has you thinking about where your place sits relative to the Golden Triangle, RiNo or Santa Fe Drive, Dolby Haas can show you what that location means for your home's value today. Get a Free Home Valuation.