Be stared at by a forty-foot bear
It works from both sides of the glass
Lawrence Argent's "I See What You Mean" has stood outside the Colorado Convention Center since 2005. It is forty feet tall, cobalt blue, up on its hind legs with both paws against the building's glass wall.
Why it's unique
Argent took the idea from a newspaper photograph of a bear looking in through the window of a Colorado house, which is an ordinary enough event here to be a local joke rather than an emergency.
What makes it more than a photograph stop is that the piece is built to be experienced from inside as well as outside. Walk into the convention centre lobby and the relationship inverts: you are in the lit room and a forty-foot animal is pressed against the glass looking at you. Very little public sculpture is designed to put the viewer on the wrong side of the encounter, and none of it is this large.
Before you go
Do both sides. Almost everyone photographs it from the pavement on 14th Street and leaves, which is half the work. The lobby is publicly accessible during the day even without a convention badge.
It is free and it is outdoors, so there are no hours from the street. Late afternoon light hits the blue best, and the sculpture is a short walk from the 16th Street Mall.