May 23, 2026 (Golden, CO) – Imagine being offered your dream job, but it means having to construct from scratch nearly 30 individual sculptures that you will design, manufacture, paint, and install (some of them animatronic), along with surrounding floor-to-ceiling artwork for an entirely new small museum (1,300 sq. ft.) exhibition, and you have 10 months to do it! Oh and your studio is in Sedona, Arizona but the museum is in Golden, Colorado so you will have to build and transport and install over and over again. Okay go!
This is the nearly unthinkable feat artist Keegan Kuhn of TRX Dinosaurs pulled off for the new Deep Time Detour exhibition at the Martin G. Lockley Discovery Center. “We had less than a year from the time we committed to a building remodel and new museum project in order to open on Memorial Day Weekend when a new shuttle service with a stop at the Lockley Center was being launched,” explained Friends of Dinosaur Ridge Executive Director Jeff Lamontagne. “We also hadn’t fully begun fundraising. So we would be simultaneously raising money as the work was happening, and the goal was an amount way beyond what this organization had ever raised!”
With the support of the Board and Staff Directors, a decision was made to go for it, and to find artists who could bring a concept that was always in-the-works to life. It would have to be highly collaborative and it would take a lot of trust, dedication, and hard work.
“Our Director of Paleontology Amy Atwater reached out to a few well respected paleo artists she thought could do an amazing job. The only one willing to take on the challenge was Keegan. Amy knew Keegan from Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) conferences where he had displayed his hyper-realistic dinosaur puppets over the years. She knew the quality of Keegan’s work was excellent and that scientific accuracy was a non-negotiable for him. The rest of the staff quickly saw that Keegan’s can-do attitude and desire to make the project a success was another winning quality, and so a contract was signed and the work began. Like a full-speed marathon.
After some trial-and-error Keegan quickly learned that he needed multiple 3D printing machines capable of printing large sections of his digital designs around-the-clock. He also wanted to use a plant-based plastic as a more eco-friendly material He ended up with 27 printers! Keegan normally works on his own but reached out to his network and collaborated with a friend to construct steel frames that would make the life-sized structures strong. “We knew we wanted these exhibits to be touchable because kids love to get their hands on displays and learn better from using a sense of touch than they do when just looking at something,” Keegan said. Soon a small team of artists and builders were helping out, including two brothers and an uncle who helped with installations. In addition to the art, Keegan had to construct platforms and multi-purpose storage containers that could serve as part of the displays. The giant plastic puzzle pieces had to be transported and brought through regular sized doors into the space, then assembled, secured in place, and hand-painted.
“One of the fun parts was deciding what colors the animals should be,” recalled Atwater of the extinct creatures. The fossil record tells scientists what their skeletal structures looked like, but their skin, fur, eye, and feather colors are still unknown allowing artistic license to be taken. “It’s also one of the fun Easter eggs of the exhibition,” Atwater said about how choices were made. Keegan and the Paleo Team at Dino Ridge decided it would be cool to depict Colorado’s ancestral animals in the colors of modern wildlife, like the golden eagle and checkered whiptail lizard. Visitors can ask docents about these details, which adds to the curiosity not only about what other colors might’ve been on display, but how today’s animals look.
After ten tireless months of work and multiple journeys with U-Haul vans throughout the fall, winter, and spring, Keegan made the final small installations to the Deep Time Detour the day before it’s opening! At a celebrating event he shared that he had visited this building ten years earlier which sparked the idea of working with small museums to present high quality displays, and it was a gratifying and proud full circle moment to be standing in that building filled with his sculptures a decade later. As a child Keegan was inspired by museum exhibits and his hope is that generations of children will visit and feel the same way, maybe even pursue careers in science, art, or a blend of the two. You can see Keegan’s other amazing work on his website https://www.trxdinosaurs.com and if you want to hire an incredible artist for a project (preferably with a longer deadline!) reach out!
