Ray Mark Rinaldi

The MCA Denver’s new and multi-tentacled Octopus Initiative is based on an old and familiar concept. It is a lending library at its core, and those have been around, in one form or another, for nearly five thousand years, ever since humankind started committing cuneiform to clay.

Despite its unusual name, the program sticks to the basic structure libraries have honed ever since: a public institution holds in trust valued materials of common interest and allows borrowers to take possession of them for a set amount of time. Nothing too original in that regard.