“For the last few years, the street art festival CRUSH has been edging toward a more organized, consistent and marketable event, but this year it finally matured into a new, and perhaps troubling, form. Where the last few years felt like an awkward pre-teen stage, this year felt like full-on adolescence — more self-aware but not yet capable of seeing the big picture or understanding its own role in a gentrified neighborhood.
Some might say that CRUSH has grown into the festival it deserves to be — securing high-profile artists, attracting large crowds of onlookers, bringing money to local businesses, making blank walls into monumental artworks. And while all of those aspects of the festival are wonderful for a city like Denver — that has historically shunned street art and other cultural oddities — they might not be the best thing for the community itself. “
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Anderson, Cori. 303 Magazine 23 September 2020.