Denver Art Museum
Encyclopedia
Denver, Colorado
The City and County of Denver is the capital and the most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Denver is a consolidated city-county, located in the South Platte River Valley on the western edge of the High Plains just east of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains...
located in Denver's Civic Center
Civic Center, Denver
Civic Center is a neighborhood and park in Denver, Colorado. The area is known as the center of the civic life in the city, with numerous institutions of arts, government, and culture as well as numerous festivals, parades, and protests throughout the year...
.
It is known for its collection of American Indian
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
art,
and has a comprehensive collection numbering more than 68,000 works from across the world.
History of the museum
In 1948, the DAM purchased a building on Acoma and 14th St. on the south side of Civic Center Park. Denver architect Burnham Hoyt renovated the building which became known as the Schleier Gallery. While the Schleier Gallery was a significant addition, the DAM still sought to increase its space. Additional pressure came from the Kress Foundation who offered to donate three collections valued at over $2 million on the condition that DAM construct a new building to house the works. DAM sought help from the city and county of Denver to raise funds. However in 1952 voters failed to approve a resolution bond. Despite this setback, the museum continued to raise funds and eventually opened up a new building. This new building, called the South Wing, opened in 1954 and made it possible for DAM to receive the Kress Foundation's gifts.
A major addition opened on October 3, 1971. The addition, now called the North Building, was designed by Gio Ponti
Giò Ponti
Gio Ponti was one of the most important Italian architects, industrial designers, furniture designers, artists, and publishers of the twentieth century.-Early life:...
and local architect James Sudler. The architecturally unique building stands 7 stories tall, has 24 sides, and is clad in grey glass tiles specially designed by Dow Corning
Dow Corning
Dow Corning is a multinational corporation headquartered in Midland, Michigan, USA. Dow Corning specializes in silicon and silicone-based technology, offering more than 7,000 products and services...
.
- 2006 February: The Duncan PavilionDuncan PavilionDuncan Pavilion is a second story addition to and renovation of the historical Morgan Wing of the Denver Art Museum acting as link between the Daniel Libeskind designed Hamilton Building and the existing Art Museum, including the famous Geo Ponti designed tower.The project intent included...
is a 5,700 SF second storey addition to the Morgan Wing that came to receive the bridge traffic from the new Frederic C. HamiltonFrederic C. HamiltonFrederic C. Hamilton is the chairman of Hamilton Groups LLC, a loosely connected group of companies focused on oil production, real estate holdings and educational institutions....
and the existing 1971 North Building once the renovation is completed. The Duncan Pavilion is designed as a temporary structure intended not to compete architecturally with the existing historical buildings or the new Frederic C. HamiltonFrederic C. HamiltonFrederic C. Hamilton is the chairman of Hamilton Groups LLC, a loosely connected group of companies focused on oil production, real estate holdings and educational institutions....
building. It provides a large attrium space for a rest half way through museum tours and roof deck where one can see sweeping vistas of the city and stand directly under the prow of the Hamilton. Along with the addition the project renovated the mechanical system and visitor circulation in the Morgan Wing.
- 2006 October: The completion and opening date of a major expansion, the Frederic C. HamiltonFrederic C. HamiltonFrederic C. Hamilton is the chairman of Hamilton Groups LLC, a loosely connected group of companies focused on oil production, real estate holdings and educational institutions....
building, designed as a joint venture by Studio Daniel Libeskind and Denver firm Davis Partnership Architects(architect of recordArchitect of recordArchitect of record is the architect or architecture firm whose name appears on a building permit issued for a specific project on which that architect or firm performed services. Building permits are issued by a government agency with the authority in a certain jurisdiction to regulate building...
). The new building opened on October 7, 2006, and is clad in titaniumTitaniumTitanium is a chemical element with the symbol Ti and atomic number 22. It has a low density and is a strong, lustrous, corrosion-resistant transition metal with a silver color....
and glass. The project was recognised by the American Institute of ArchitectsAmerican Institute of ArchitectsThe American Institute of Architects is a professional organization for architects in the United States. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the AIA offers education, government advocacy, community redevelopment, and public outreach to support the architecture profession and improve its public image...
as a successful Building Information ModelingBuilding Information ModelingBuilding information modeling is the process of generating and managing building data during its life cycle.BIM involves representing a design as objects – vague and undefined, generic or product-specific, solid shapes or void-space oriented , that carry their geometry, relations and attributes...
project http://www.aia.org/SiteObjects/files/convention_ces/TH1807.pdf. Since opening, the building has been plagued by roof leaks for three years. As of December 2009, the question of who will bear financial responsibility for the lengthy and extensive repair work has gone to arbitration.
Collections
The museum has nine curatorial departments: architecture, design & graphics; Asian art; modern and contemporary; native arts (American Indian, Oceanic, and African); New World (pre-Columbian and Spanish Colonial); painting and sculpture (European and American); photography; Western art; and textile art.Architecture, design and graphics
Formed in 1990, the department opened its first permanent galleries in 1993. Changing exhibitions drawn from its collection of fine and decorative arts are displayed on the sixth floor, featuring pre-1900 European and American decorative arts. 20th-century design galleries are located on the second floor.Asian art
The museum's Asian art collection, the only such resource in the Rocky Mountain region, includes four main galleries devoted to the arts of India, China, Japan and Southwest Asia. Additional galleries offer works from Tibet, Nepal and Southeast Asia, while thematic galleries display religious art and traditional folk crafts.Modern and contemporary
The modern and contemporary collection of 20th-century art contains over 4,500 works with an emphasis on both internationally known and emerging artists. The department also includes the Herbert BayerHerbert Bayer
Herbert Bayer was an Austrian American graphic designer, painter, photographer, sculptor, art director, environmental & interior designer, and architect, who was widely recognized as the last living member of the Bauhaus and was instrumental in the development of the Atlantic Richfield Company's...
collection and archive, an important Bauhaus
Bauhaus
', commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term stood for "School of Building".The Bauhaus school was founded by...
artistic and scholarly resource, containing some 2,500 items including works by artists such as Man Ray
Man Ray
Man Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...
, Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
, David Hockney
David Hockney
David Hockney, CH, RA, is an English painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage designer and photographer, who is based in Bridlington, Yorkshire and Kensington, London....
, Robert Motherwell
Robert Motherwell
Robert Motherwell American painter, printmaker and editor. He was one of the youngest of the New York School , which also included Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and Philip Guston....
, Damien Hirst
Damien Hirst
Damien Steven Hirst is an English artist, entrepreneur and art collector. He is the most prominent member of the group known as the Young British Artists , who dominated the art scene in Britain during the 1990s. He is internationally renowned, and is reportedly Britain's richest living artist,...
, Philip Guston
Philip Guston
Philip Guston was a notable painter and printmaker in the New York School, which included many of the Abstract expressionists, such as Jackson Pollock and Willem De Kooning...
, Knox Martin
Knox Martin
Knox Martin is an American painter, sculptor and muralist.Born in 1923 in Barranquilla, Colombia, he studied at the Art Students League of New York from 1946 till 1950. He is one of the leading members of New York School - a group of artists and writers. He lives and works in New York City."Art is...
, Dan Flavin
Dan Flavin
Dan Flavin was an American minimalist artist famous for creating sculptural objects and installations from commercially available fluorescent light fixtures.-Early life and career:...
, John DeAndrea
John DeAndrea
John De Andrea was born in Denver, Colorado on November 24, 1941 and is an American sculptor, known for realistic sculptures of human figures, dressed and nude in true-to-life postures.- Classification :...
, Gottfried Helnwein
Gottfried Helnwein
Gottfried Helnwein is an Austrian-Irish fine artist, painter, photographer, installation and performance artist.-Work:Helnwein studied at the University of Visual Art in Vienna...
and Yue Minjun
Yue Minjun
Yue Minjun is a contemporary Chinese artist based in Beijing, China. He is best known for oil paintings depicting himself in various settings, frozen in laughter. He has also reproduced this signature image in sculpture, watercolor and prints...
.
Linda
One of the museum's most popular and frequently asked-about pieces is part of the modern and contemporary collection. Linda, by Denver artist John DeAndreaJohn DeAndrea
John De Andrea was born in Denver, Colorado on November 24, 1941 and is an American sculptor, known for realistic sculptures of human figures, dressed and nude in true-to-life postures.- Classification :...
, is a life-size realistic sculpture of a sleeping woman. Made of polyvinyl
Polyvinyl
Polyvinyl is a group of polymers derived from vinyl monomers.Polyvinyl may also refer to:* Polyvinyl chloride* Polyvinyl acetate* Polyvinyl alcohol* Polyvinyl Record Co., an independent record label...
, this piece is sunlight-sensitive and is therefore shown only for short periods of time. The museum also owns another piece by the same artist, Clothed Artist and Model (1976).
The Shootout
In 1983 the museum became the home of Red GroomsRed Grooms
Red Grooms is an American multimedia artist best known for his colorful pop-art constructions depicting frenetic scenes of modern urban life...
' controversial pop-art sculpture The Shootout, which portrays a cowboy and an Indian shooting at one another. The sculpture, now on the roof of the museum restaurant, had been evicted from two other downtown Denver locations after Native-American activists protested and threatened to deface the work.
Native American
The museum's collection of American Indian art has over 16,000 works representing over a hundred tribes across North America. Under the direction of Arnold RonnebeckArnold Ronnebeck
Arnold Rönnebeck was a German-born American modernist artist and museum administrator. He was a vital member of both the European and American avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century before settling in Denver, Colorado...
, Art Director from 1926–1930, the Denver Art Museum was one of the first museums to use aesthetic quality as the criteria to develop such a collection, and the first art museum in this country to collect American Indian arts. The museum exhibits these items as art rather than anthropological artifacts
Artifact (archaeology)
An artifact or artefact is "something made or given shape by man, such as a tool or a work of art, esp an object of archaeological interest"...
. The range of Native American art styles is reflected in such diverse objects as Northwest Coast woodcarving, Naskapi painted leather garments, Winnebago twined weaving, Plains Indian beadwork, Navajo weaving, Pueblo pottery, and California basketry.
Oceanic
The Oceanic collection, on view in the Hamilton Building, includes all major island groups, with particular strength in late 18th and early 19th century wood carving and painted bark cloth from the islands of Samoa, Tonga and Hawaii. The Melanesian collection consists of masterpieces from Papua New Guinea and New Ireland. The contemporary Oceanic works, including paintings, drawings and prints, add distinction to the collection and demonstrate cultural continuities and innovation in Oceanic artistic traditions.African
The African collection consists of approximately 1,000 objects, and focuses on the diverse artistic traditions of Africa, including rare works in sculpture, textiles, jewelry, painting, printmaking and drawings. Although the strength of the collection is west African art, with emphasis on Yoruba works, there are masterpieces from all regions and mediums of expression including wood, metals, fibers, terracotta and mixed media compositions. The hallmark of the collection includes contemporary expressions, comprising paintings, sculptures, drawings, videos and prints from prominent living artists with international reputations. Interactive elements in the gallery include an iPod station with African music selections, an area where you can create rubbings using African designs and a movie hide-away for the kids.New World (pre-Columbian and Spanish Colonial)
The museum has a comprehensive representation of the major stylistic movements from all the geographic areas and cultures of Latin America. The New World Collection, comprising over 5,500 objects, is exhibited in a unified presentation of the arts of Latin America. Included are pre-Columbian masterworks of ceramic, stone, gold and jade, as well as paintings, sculpture, furniture and silver from the Spanish Colonial Period.The Frederick & Jan Mayer Center at the Denver Art Museum http://mayercenter.denverartmuseum.org is dedicated to increasing awareness and promoting scholarship in the fields of Pre-Columbian and Spanish Colonial art through the New World collections of the Denver Art Museum. To this end, the Mayer Center sponsors annual symposia and publication of their proceedings, the publication of additional volumes as it sees fit, research opportunities including a resident fellowship program and periodic study tours to Latin America and Spain. The programming of the Mayer Center is developed and administered by the staff of the New World Department, Denver Art Museum.
Pre-Columbian
The Denver Art Museum Pre-Columbian Collection is encyclopedic in breath and depth, and exhibited in an open storage gallery, allowing scholars to view the entire collection. The Pre-Columbian collection represents nearly every major culture in Mesoamerica, lower Central America, and South America. The collection’s greatest strength is the Mayer Central American collection which includes gold, jade, stone and earthenware from Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama. Mayan art from Mexico, Guatemala and Belize is especially significant and contains a large number of very important works. Other significant holdings from Mesoamerica include our West Mexican, Teotihuacan and Olmec collections. South American collections are especially strong in Ecuadorian and Colombian art and in several of the Peruvian styles, particularly Moche, Wari, Tiwanaku and Chimu.Spanish Colonial
The museum collection of Spanish Colonial painting and furniture is especially strong in Mexican painting, largely due to the collecting interests and generosity of the Mayer family. Another area of great strength is Peruvian Colonial paintings from the Frank Barrows Freyer Collection. Silver holdings, comprising the Appleman and Stapleton collections, and furniture holdings from all over Latin America represent a comprehensive collection. The Anne Evans collection of Spanish Colonial art from the southwestern United States is yet another significant strength of the collection.Painting and sculpture (European and American)
The over 3,000 objects in this department is composed of American and European painting, sculpture, and prints through the early 20th century. The European collection is richest in Renaissance and 19th-century French paintings. The American collection consists of paintings, sculpture, prints, and drawings representing all major periods in American art before 1945. Artists represented include Sandro BotticelliSandro Botticelli
Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance...
, Defendente Ferrari
Defendente Ferrari
Defendente Ferrari was an Italian painter active in Piedmont.Ferrari was born at Chivasso, near Turin, and worked in the workshop of Giovanni Martino Spanzotti....
, Camille Pissarro
Camille Pissarro
Camille Pissarro was a French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas . His importance resides in his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, as he was the only artist to exhibit in both forms...
, Claude Monet
Claude Monet
Claude Monet was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. . Retrieved 6 January 2007...
, Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...
, Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
, and Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia Totto O'Keeffe was an American artist.Born near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, O'Keeffe first came to the attention of the New York art community in 1916, several decades before women had gained access to art training in America’s colleges and universities, and before any of its women artists...
. Other painters represented include; Jacopo del Casentino
Jacopo del Casentino
Jacopo del Casentino was an Italian painter called Jacopo Landino or da Prato Vecchio, active mainly in Tuscany...
("Madonna and Child"), Bernardo Zenale
Bernardo Zenale
Bernardo Zenale was an Italian painter and architect.- Biography :Zenale was born in Treviglio, Lombardy, where in 1485 he finished the great polyptych for the church of St. Martin, together with his fellow Bernardino Butinone. Later he collaborated to the decoration of the Certosa di Pavia...
, Niccolò di Pietro Gerini
Niccolò di Pietro Gerini
Niccolò di Pietro Gerini was an Italian painter of the late Gothic period, active mainly in his native Florence. Niccolo di Pietro Gerini's works can be found in major art galleries in Rome, the Vatican, Florence, London, Milan, New York, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, St Petersburg,...
("4 Crowned Saints Before Diocletan"), Filippino Lippi
Filippino Lippi
Filippino Lippi was an Italian painter working during the High Renaissance in Florence, Italy.-Biography:...
, William-Adolphe Bouguereau
William-Adolphe Bouguereau
William-Adolphe Bouguereau was a French academic painter. William Bouguereau was a traditionalist; in his realistic genre paintings he used mythological themes, making modern interpretations of Classical subjects, with an emphasis on the female human body.-Life and career :William-Adolphe...
, Berthe Morisot
Berthe Morisot
Berthe Morisot was a painter and a member of the circle of painters in Paris who became known as the Impressionists. She was described by Gustave Geffroy in 1894 as one of "les trois grandes dames" of Impressionism alongside Marie Bracquemond and Mary Cassatt.In 1864, she exhibited for the first...
, Max Beckmann
Max Beckmann
Max Beckmann was a German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, and writer. Although he is classified as an Expressionist artist, he rejected both the term and the movement...
, Juan Gris
Juan Gris
José Victoriano González-Pérez , better known as Juan Gris, was a Spanish painter and sculptor who lived and worked in France most of his life...
,and Georges Braque
Georges Braque
Georges Braque[p] was a major 20th century French painter and sculptor who, along with Pablo Picasso, developed the art style known as Cubism.-Early Life:...
.
The Berger Collection
Works are also on view from The Berger Collection, one of the largest private individual collections of British art in the world, with more than 150 pieces by BritishUnited Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
artists such as Thomas Gainsborough
Thomas Gainsborough
Thomas Gainsborough was an English portrait and landscape painter.-Suffolk:Thomas Gainsborough was born in Sudbury, Suffolk. He was the youngest son of John Gainsborough, a weaver and maker of woolen goods. At the age of thirteen he impressed his father with his penciling skills so that he let...
, Edward Lear
Edward Lear
Edward Lear was an English artist, illustrator, author, and poet, renowned today primarily for his literary nonsense, in poetry and prose, and especially his limericks, a form that he popularised.-Biography:...
and other artists of the English School that covers a period of 6 centuries.
Photography
Photography--previously incorporated in the modern and contemporary and Western collections--became a separate department in 2008.Textile art
The collection ranges from Coptic and pre-Columbian textiles to contemporary works of art in fiber, overlapping culturally and chronologically with all but the Native Arts Department. A nationally-recognized collection of American quilts and coverlets, the Julia Wolf Glasser Collection of samplers, and the Charlotte Hill Grant Collection of Chinese Court Costumes are among the strengths of the department.Western
The Petrie Institute of Western American Art at the Denver Art Museum was established in 2001. Also that year, the collection was augmented by the Harmsen Foundation's donation of over 700 paintings. The Harmsen Collection joined a collection already rich in 19th-century photographs of the West and with such masterworks as Charles Marion Russell'sCharles Marion Russell
Charles Marion Russell , also known as C. M. Russell, Charlie Russell, and "Kid" Russell, was an artist of the Old American West. Russell created more than 2,000 paintings of cowboys, Indians, and landscapes set in the Western United States, in addition to bronze sculptures...
In the Enemy's Country, Frederic Remington's
Frederic Remington
Frederic Sackrider Remington was an American painter, illustrator, sculptor, and writer who specialized in depictions of the Old American West, specifically concentrating on the last quarter of the 19th century American West and images of cowboys, American Indians, and the U. S...
The Cheyenne, and Charles Deas’s
Charles Deas
Charles Deas , was an American painter noted for his oil paintings of Native Americans and fur trappers of the mid-19th century.-Biography:...
Long Jakes.
The Harmsen Collection
The Harmsen Collection contains works by artists and photographers who charted the colonization of the American West in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, such as Frederic RemingtonFrederic Remington
Frederic Sackrider Remington was an American painter, illustrator, sculptor, and writer who specialized in depictions of the Old American West, specifically concentrating on the last quarter of the 19th century American West and images of cowboys, American Indians, and the U. S...
, Charles M Russell
Charles Marion Russell
Charles Marion Russell , also known as C. M. Russell, Charlie Russell, and "Kid" Russell, was an artist of the Old American West. Russell created more than 2,000 paintings of cowboys, Indians, and landscapes set in the Western United States, in addition to bronze sculptures...
, Frank E. Schoonover
Frank Schoonover
Frank Earle Schoonover was an American illustrator. Born in Oxford, New Jersey, he studied under Howard Pyle at the Drexel Institute in Philadelphia and became part of what would be known as the Brandywine School...
, and Frank Tenney Johnson
Frank Tenney Johnson
Frank Tenney Johnson was a painter of the american west, and he popularized a style of painting cowboys which became known as "The Johnson Moonlight Technique". Somewhere on the Range is an example of Johnson's moonlight technique...
as well as more modern interpreters of American & Western art, such as Gerald Curtis Delano
Gerald Curtis Delano
Gerard Curtis Delano was a painter of the American west.Delano was born in Marion, Massachusetts. He served in the US Navy in the First World War, then worked on a ranch in Colorado, before moving to New York to study art...
, Harvey Dunn
Harvey Dunn
Harvey Thomas Dunn was an American painter. He is best known for his prairie-intimate masterpiece, The Prairie is My Garden. In this painting, a mother and her son and daughter are out gathering flowers from the quintessential prairie of the Great Plains.-Early life:Dunn was born on a homestead...
, Dan Muller
Dan Muller
Dan Muller aka Daniel Cody Muller , artist, illustrator and writer of the American West; Muller was born in Choteau, Montana, October 11, 1889 to Carl and Augusta Muller....
and Raymond Jonson
Raymond Jonson
Raymond Jonson was an American-born Modernist painter known for his paintings of the American Southwest.- Biography :Raymond Jonson was born in Chariton, Iowa in 1891, but grew up in Portland, Oregon. At twenty, Jonson attended the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. Later, he continued the...
.
Selected past exhibitions
- 1999 ImpressionismImpressionismImpressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
: Paintings Collected by European Museums, which received 215,000 visits. - 2000 Matisse from The Baltimore Museum of ArtBaltimore Museum of ArtThe Baltimore Museum of Art in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, was founded in 1914. Built in the Roman Temple style, the Museum is home to an internationally renowned collection of 19th-century, modern, and contemporary art. Founded in 1914 with a single painting, the BMA today has 90,000 works...
which received 155,000 visits. - 2001 European Masterpieces: Six Centuries of Paintings from the National Gallery of VictoriaNational Gallery of VictoriaThe National Gallery of Victoria is an art gallery and museum in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is the oldest and the largest public art gallery in Australia. Since December 2003, NGV has operated across two sites...
, AustraliaAustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area... - 2002 The Cos Cob Art ColonyCos Cob Art ColonyThe Cos Cob Art Colony was a group of artists, many of them American Impressionists, who gathered in and around Cos Cob, a section of Greenwich, Connecticut, from about 1890 to about 1920....
: Impressionists on the ConnecticutConnecticutConnecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
Shore - 2002 Metamorphosis: Modernist Photographs by Herbert BayerHerbert BayerHerbert Bayer was an Austrian American graphic designer, painter, photographer, sculptor, art director, environmental & interior designer, and architect, who was widely recognized as the last living member of the Bauhaus and was instrumental in the development of the Atlantic Richfield Company's...
and Man RayMan RayMan Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal... - 2002 US Design 1975-2000
- 2002 Art & Home: Dutch Interiors in the Age of Rembrandt
- 2003 Antarctica: Through the Eyes of Those Who Live It
- 2003 BonnardPierre BonnardPierre Bonnard was a French painter and printmaker, as well as a founding member of Les Nabis.-Biography:...
- 2003 SargentJohn Singer SargentJohn Singer Sargent was an American artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian era luxury. During his career, he created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings...
and ItalyItalyItaly , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and... - 2003 El GrecoEl GrecoEl Greco was a painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. "El Greco" was a nickname, a reference to his ethnic Greek origin, and the artist normally signed his paintings with his full birth name in Greek letters, Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος .El Greco was born on Crete, which was at...
to Picasso from The Phillips CollectionPhillips CollectionThe Phillips Collection is an art museum founded by Duncan Phillips in 1921 as the Phillips Memorial Gallery located in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Phillips was the grandson of James H...
, which received 191,000 visits - 2003 RETROSPECTACLE: 25 Years of Collecting Modern and Contemporary Art
- 2004 Frederic RemingtonFrederic RemingtonFrederic Sackrider Remington was an American painter, illustrator, sculptor, and writer who specialized in depictions of the Old American West, specifically concentrating on the last quarter of the 19th century American West and images of cowboys, American Indians, and the U. S...
: The Color of Night - 2004 Painting a New World: Mexican Art and Life, 1521-1821
- 2004 Tiwanaku: Ancestors of the Inca
- 2005 Heaven and Home: Chinese Art of the Han Dynasty from the Sze Hong Collection
- 2005 Amish Quilts: Kaleidoscope of Color from the Collection of Faith and Stephen Brown
- 2005 Blanket Statements, an exhibition of NavajoNavajo peopleThe Navajo of the Southwestern United States are the largest single federally recognized tribe of the United States of America. The Navajo Nation has 300,048 enrolled tribal members. The Navajo Nation constitutes an independent governmental body which manages the Navajo Indian reservation in the...
Weavers - 2005 New Classics, contemporary pieces from the Museum’s American Indian collection, by a variety of artists including Dan NaminghaDan NaminghaDan Namingha is an important Native American painter and sculptor. He was born in Keams Canyon, Arizona and is a member of the Hopi-Tewa tribe. He currently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.-Education:*University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas...
, Emmi WhitehorseEmmi WhitehorseEmmi Whitehorse is a Native American painter.She was born in Crownpoint, New Mexico and is a member of the Navajo Nation. She currently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico....
, Mateo Romero and Kevin Red StarKevin Red StarKevin Red Star is a Native American artist. He was born and lives in Lodge Grass, Montana and is a member of the Crow tribe.-His Education:*San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, California*Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana...
. - 2006 RADAR: Selections from the Colorado Collection of Vicki and Kent Logan
- 2006 Breaking the Mold: The Virginia Vogel Mattern Collection of Contemporary Native American Art
- 2006 Japanese Art From the Collection of John and Kimiko Powers
- 2007 Artisans & Kings: Selected Treasures from the Louvre
- 2007 Color as Field: American Painting, 1950-1975
- 2007 Maria: American Icon
- 2007 George Carlson: Heart of the West
- 2007 Clyfford Still Unveiled: Selections from the Estate
- 2008 Inspiring Impressionism
- 2008 Landscapes from the Age of Impressionism
- 2009 The Psychedelic Experience: Rock Posters from the San Francisco Bay Area, 1965-71
Education
The museum’s Education Department has emphasized three areas: research in making museum visits successful and enjoyable, the creation of innovative installed learning materials (e.g., audio tours, labeling, video and reading areas, response journals, and hands-on and art-making areas), and interactive learning for young people both in school and family groups. Family-friendly programs such as the Just for Fun Family Center, Eye Spy gallery games, the Discovery Library, Kids Corner, and Family Backpacks have been both popular and successful. In particular, the Family Backpack program has been adopted and adapted by other institutions, ranging from the Victoria and Albert MuseumVictoria and Albert Museum
The Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...
to the Henry Ford Museum.
Funding
The museum is run by a non-profit organizationNon-profit organization
Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...
separate from the City of Denver. Major funding for the museum is provided by a 0.1% sales tax levied in the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District
Scientific and Cultural Facilities District
The Scientific and Cultural Facilities District is a special regional tax district of the State of Colorado that provides funding for art, music, theater, dance, zoology, botany, natural history, or cultural history organizations in the Denver metropolitan area.In 1988, voters in the Denver region...
(SCFD), which includes seven Colorado counties in the Denver-Aurora metropolitan area
Denver-Aurora Metropolitan Area
The Denver-Aurora-Broomfield, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area is a United States Census Bureau defined Metropolitan Statistical Area in the State of Colorado that includes the City and County of Denver and nine suburban counties. The Census Bureau estimates that the population was 2,357,404 on...
. About 60% of this tax is used to provide funding for the Denver Art Museum and three other major science and cultural facilities in Denver (the Denver Botanic Gardens
Denver Botanic Gardens
The Denver Botanic Gardens is a public botanical garden located in Denver, Colorado in the Cheesman Park neighborhood. The park contains a conservatory, a variety of theme gardens and a sunken amphitheater, which hosts various concerts in the summer...
, the Denver Zoo
Denver Zoo
The Denver Zoo is an facility located in City Park of Denver, Colorado, USA. Founded in 1896, it is owned by the City and County of Denver and funded in part by the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District . It was the most popular paid attraction in the Denver metropolitan area in 2005.The...
, and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science
Denver Museum of Nature and Science
The Denver Museum of Nature & Science is a municipal natural history and science museum in Denver, Colorado. It is a resource for informal science education in the Rocky Mountain region. A variety of exhibitions, programs, and activities help museum visitors learn about the natural history of...
). In addition, the museum receives large private donations and loans from private collections. Over the past five years, the Denver Art Museum has averaged 465,000 visitors a year. Total revenues for the Museum in 2003 were $23 million.