Our picks for the gallery shows you shouldn’t miss this fall:

(You can also read more about Denver’s art scene, or check out this fall’s student art shows here.)

Colorful, community-built altars are created on-site for Longmont Museum’s October Día de los Muertos exhibit. Oct. 5–Nov. 10

3rd Annual Mobile Phone Images Juried Show at Gallery NRC, through Oct. 19

Paintings of the Rocky Mountains in the David Cook Gallery’s National Parks: Historic Connections, Contemporary Interpretations,” through October 31.

Continuing Legacies: Evolving Ceramic Traditions at Arvada Center the Arts and Humanities, through Nov. 10

Heart Lines: Expressions of Native North American Art at the University of Colorado Boulder Art Museum, through Dec. 21

Desiree Holman’s light and sound installations and watercolors in Sophont at Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design, Oct. 17–Nov. 23

RedLine’s residents’ An Invisible Boundary, an exhibition inspired by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges’s ruminations on going blind, Oct. 26–Dec. 29

Muses of Mount Helikon, the first exhibition at Helikon, a new RiNo gallery, Oct. 29–Dec. 1

Picture Society presents the work of six photographers in slideshows set to music at Carmen Wiedenhoeft Gallery, Nov. 1

Refashioned Fables: Icons and Tribes of the Disbanded West at Visions West Gallery, Nov. 1–Dec. 4

Local Showcase, featuring established and emerging Denver artists at Firehouse Art Center, Nov. 6–Dec. 8

Chaos Before Order, painter Dominique Samyn’s first Colorado show, at Mirada Fine Art Gallery, Nov. 9–30

Digital textile artist Gay E. Lasher’s Transformations at aBuzz Gallery, Nov. 15–Dec. 15

Denver theater community pillar Henry Lowenstein presents a retrospective of his mother Maria Lowenstein’s work at Niza Knoll Gallery, Nov. 15–Dec. 21.

Denver Square Foot (all works are 12 inches by 12 inches and $200) at Bell Gallery, Nov. 18–Dec. 31

Cross Currents, a cross-cultural, dialogue-based exhibit about American Indian legacies in the context of contemporary art at the Center for Visual Art, Metropolitan State University of Denver. Nov. 22–Feb. 8, 2014

Artist Kent Pendleton hid 10 drawings of tiny elves in the backgrounds he painted on the walls of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science; see if you can find them all. There’s no rush—the elves are permanent DMNS residents.

Fall is a perfect time to visit “Checkmate”—a monumental bronze dedicated to “the working American cowboy” by Herb Mignery—on permanent display at Boulder’s Leanin’ Tree’s Museum of Western Art.

—Image caption: “Stereotype: The Stefani,” by Cannupahanska, who will be showing at Metro State’s Cross Currents exhibition; courtesy Metro State University

Kasey Cordell
Kasey Cordell
Kasey Cordell is the former Editorial Projects Director for 5280.