This week from CPR’s Arts Bureau: Day of the Dead, Mark Mothersbaugh retrospective and more

(Photo: CPR / Daniel Mescher)

This week's in-depth coverage of the Colorado culture scene from CPR's arts bureau:

• Denver media personality Flo Hernandez Ramos talks with CPR arts editor Chloe Veltman about how the commercialization of the Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos threatens to change its essential meaning.

• A new exhibition at Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) highlights four decades of artwork by Mark Mothersbaugh of the new wave band DEVO. Arts editor Chloe Veltman tours the exhibition with Mothersbaugh, to explore the relationship between the works on display and the artist's music.

• A production of dramatist Diane Samuels’ 1993 drama “Kindertransport" at the 2014 Neustadt Jewish Arts, Authors, Movies and Music Festival (JAAMM Fest) in Denver, honors Holocaust survivors and pays tribute to the late Denver theater impresario Henry Lowenstein. CPR arts reporter Corey H. Jones attended a rehearsal of the play and talked with several of its collaborators.

• Before motion pictures had the technology to sync dialogue and sound effects, films relied on live music to bring actors’ muted gestures to life. Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra composer Rodney Sauer talks to CPR about how he scored Hitchcock’s final silent film, “Blackmail” for the ensemble’s Friday night presentation in Loveland.

Arts happenings around Colorado this weekend:

• CPR’s Arts Bureau spotlights this weekend’s Colorado cultural events, including a drama that follows three generations of a family and a documentary that looks at the future of agriculture in Colorado’s eastern plains and beyond.

Coverage from CPR's arts bureau is now also available as a weekly podcast via iTunes and the NPR podcast directory.