Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art was founded in part to provide a venue for shows like the spectacular 5 Abstract that opened this past weekend. That’s because this exhibit gives major artists from Colorado the kind of serious attention that only a museum show can deliver, something that 500-pound gorilla…
Since coming on as director of the Art Students League of Denver (200 Grant Street, 303-778-6990), Leona Lazar has been on a campaign to expand and diversify the art school’s programs beyond its mainstay of painting classes. One of the new programs is ceramics. “Last summer, we became very serious…
Though Recent Works, which opened last weekend at the William Havu Gallery, is billed as a group show, it’s been installed as four distinct presentations, and thus is more like a quartet of solos. This is for the best, because each of the artists has an individual approach, and they…
Installed in the front space at Fresh Art (208 South Broadway, 720-570-2255) is Boys Dreams, featuring a series of new paintings by Denver artist Steven Altman. And, to put it mildly, they are completely unexpected, perhaps even shocking, because instead of the kind of automatist abstractions he’s been exhibiting since…
The City of Englewood provides a tragic example of planning gone horribly wrong. It’s a sad story that started decades ago. One early planning disaster began in the 1980s, when the heart of what used to be a small town was torn out to make room for a redevelopment scheme…
The Cordell Taylor Gallery (2350 Lawrence Street, 303-296-0927) opened six months ago in a very unlikely place: across the street from several of the city’s largest homeless shelters. This location creates a lively mix of activity on the sidewalk, and you might not want to tarry on your way from…
It might seem like the art world is the kind of charmed place that’s always filled with hearts and flowers — or at least pictures of them — and to a great extent, it is. Unfortunately, sometimes the hearts are broken and the flowers are wilted. That’s how it is…
To put it mildly, Denver’s never been much of a sculpture town. Until about five years ago, you could count on two hands the accomplished contemporary sculptors working around here. But then something changed, and suddenly a whole troupe of emerging sculptors appeared. In recent months, this influx has reached…
In past years, the Denver Art Museum has usually seen the holiday season as an appropriate time to close some of its galleries and partially shut down — strange, but true. In a dramatic change this year, however, all of the major galleries at the DAM are open, and the…
A lot of local art centers and even some galleries have put together special sales this year for the gift-giving season. An added feature of the Holiday Art Market at the Foothills Art Center (809 Fifteenth Street, Golden, 303-279-3922) is the absolutely perfect setting of the center itself, which is…
It’s hard to believe, but it was only about five years ago that Denver painter Bruce Price first made a splash with his distinctive post-minimalist paintings. In Painting in the Age of Transparency, one of three exhibits at Ron Judish Fine Arts, Price shows off his latest batch of elaborate,…
Just in time for the gift-giving season, the Edge Gallery (3658 Navajo Street, 303-477-7173) is presenting its annual fundraiser, Blue Light Special, in which nothing costs more than $200, and a portion of each sale is donated to Edge. Although the Edge-sters want their alternative gallery to look like an…
After seeing the stunning Martha Daniels, Amy Metier, Betty Woodman installed on its first floor, I’m tempted to say that the William Havu Gallery has never looked better. This is hardly surprising, and it’s obvious why: All three artists are stylistically linked to one another in a variety of ways…
Last spring, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center announced an incredibly stupid expansion plan. Cooked up by Minneapolis-based facility planner Hammel, Green and Abrahamson, the concept called for a huge box to be plunked down on the front of the building. That building, as it happens, is a 1936 moderne…
Clark Richert is surely on everyone’s list of the most significant Colorado artists of the last quarter-century, and his work has been included in museums and corporate and private collections around the country. What made him famous around here is the work that he began to produce in the 1960s:…
With so many people staying home this winter, it’s virtually a public service that the Spark Gallery (1535 Platte Street, 303 455-4435) has been transformed into a vacationland of the imagination. In the front gallery is Being There, a selection of charcoal drawings and oil paintings by Barbara Shark that…
Last summer, the Denver Art Museum surprised everyone by announcing that it had received the Harmsen Collection of Western and American Indian Art as a gift. The locally famous collection, put together by Bill and Dorothy Harmsen, is made up of thousands of pieces ranging from important paintings and sculptures…
The Andenken Gallery (2110 Market Street, 303-332-5582) is presenting Works by Dianne Barnes, Michelle Barnes, Tracey Barnes, a group show representing two generations of the same family. The senior Barnes is Dianne; Michelle and Tracey are her daughters. Dianne’s work, a series of miniature garments and shrines in Plexiglas boxes,…
Cydney Payton, director of Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art, feels that the museum’s facility in Sakura Square is too cramped — and who could disagree? As she points out, the space also has a lot of environmental problems: Sunlight streams annoyingly into the galleries, producing glare and uneven lighting; there…
Although Go Fish! (see page 67) fills the first floor at the Museum of Contemporary Art, there’s another show in the gallery upstairs. What do you see when you look over there? (2000 Cooley, East Palo Alto, California) is a photo-based installation by Galia Shapira, an Israeli artist living in…
It is no exaggeration to say that Denver’s entire art landscape changed for the better last week when Ron Judish Fine Arts cut the ribbon on its new and unbelievably grand gallery in Highland. The gallery had been located on Wazee Street in LoDo before shutting down in the middle…
The Spark Gallery (1535 Platte Street, 303-455-4435) typically hosts two shows at once, which is the ordinary practice for most co-ops. Unfortunately, more often than not, the shows are incompatible. I suppose this is the inevitable result of the vagaries of scheduling and the very heterogeneous membership at Spark. This…
