ONE day last fall Adam Lerner, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver, convened a staff meeting. The aim was to brainstorm for the next season of Mixed Taste, the museum’s signature lecture series.

Billed as “tag-team lectures on unrelated topics,” each event involves presentations by experts on two subjects that create a high-low pair, like “Wittgenstein and Hula Dancing” or “Time Travel and the French Situationists.” That is followed by a question-and-answer session in which audience members urge the speakers to make connections between the two.

“It’s wonderful,” Dr. Lerner said, “because in so many instances a relationship between the subjects emerges, but you could never predict that ahead of time.”

But that day — even though he styles himself “Director and Chief Animator, Department of Fabrications” on his business cards — Dr. Lerner was all business. “I think it’s about time we did a puppy Mixed Taste,” he said, “and pair it with something really big like labor strikes. Maybe ‘Labor Disputes and Labradoodles’?”

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