On the first floor of the Denver Art Museum, there always seems to be some kind of blockbuster exhibition. People complain about these shows, but it makes sense that the museum would do them: The DAM needs to crank up its attendance — and not just to collect more money…
One of the new sculptures in the Civic Center has made quite a splash, winding up on the front page of the Denver Post even before it was unveiled. The untitled sculpture, by nationally famous artist Larry Kirkland, is one of several new pieces adorning the new, nearly completed Wellington…
The art season runs from September to May, roughly paralleling the academic year. There is even a corollary to summer school, in the form of the art world’s light summer season, which is just now winding down. It’s September, the kids are back in school, and a new season is…
There’s an elegant solo exhibit at Edge Gallery that’s definitely worth seeing. Installed in the middle space at the co-op, Intersections features the latest work on paper by well-respected Denver artist Susan Goldstein. The meaning of the show’s title is hard to pinpoint. As Goldstein herself suggests in the statement…
For the past few years, one of Denver’s most urbane public spaces — Skyline Park, by world-renowned landscape architect Lawrence Halprin — has been continually endangered by various remodeling plans, some of which include the threat of demolition. Let’s put it this way: To even discuss the destruction of Skyline…
For almost twenty years, the Curtis Arts & Humanities Center (2349 East Orchard Road, Greenwood Village, 303-797-1779) has sponsored an annual exhibition open to all artists in Colorado. The process goes like this: Artists deliver original works (not slides), and a celebrity juror goes through the hundreds of entries and…
Here at the beginning of the 21st century, it seems strange that so many artists persist in their attempts to render external reality with paint and brushes. Didn’t abstraction (on the one hand) and photography (on the other) vanquish the old warhorse of representational painting over a hundred years ago?…
The Andenken Gallery (2110 Market Street, 303-292-3281) is currently hosting Force Future 2002, the second effort of the ISM art collective. ISM’s goal is to bring worthy emerging artists to the fore, and that’s surely what the first Force Future accomplished. The likes of Karen McClanahan, John Morrison, Jonathan Stiles…
The history of art in Colorado has yet to be written, so those of us with an interest in the topic have to get our information in dribs and drabs, chiefly through exhibitions. Of course, that’s only one of the reasons to see Colorado Collections II. Others include the incredible…
Veterans of Clay, in the North Gallery at the Lakewood Cultural Center (470 South Allison Parkway, Lakewood, 303-987-7800), is a small show, but it’s filled with work by artists with big reputations — and that was the idea. The exhibit takes an economical look at a small group of Colorado…
The spectacular blockbuster exhibit An American Century of Photography: From Dry Plate to Digital, which highlights the photo collection of Hallmark Cards, is a third of the way through its three-month run at the Denver Art Museum. Denver is the seventh and last stop for the traveling show. Hallmark, the…
Renowned sculptor George Rickey died last month at the age of 95. Born in America, Rickey became interested in art in England in the 1930s, when he attended Oxford University and the Ruskin School of Art. After graduating from Oxford, he went on to Paris, where he became friends with…
Taking in Set in Motion: Tim Prentice at the Robischon Gallery in LoDo is a good way to escape the heat wave. Prentice’s kinetic scupltures are pretty cool, but they’re made even cooler (literally) by the multitude of fans the gallery has installed to get them to move. Between the…
A group of paintings by Warren Kelly have been brought together in a marvelous little show called panoramic: h. warren kelly, now on display in the associates’ space at Pirate (3659 Navajo Street, 303-458-6058). Kelly, who’s lived in Denver for the last of couple years, is from Taos, and it’s…
Oh, I know, there’s that horrible hour-long drive. And not only that, but it’s been so darn hot. Well, too bad, because you’re going to want to make the trip to the Loveland Museum and Gallery anyway to see the sweeping Vance Kirkland Retrospective. But get moving, because this stunning…
The Wells Fargo Center (entrance at Sherman and 16th streets) is the masterful Philip Johnson complex downtown that’s been affectionately nicknamed “the cash-register building.” It is surely one of the very finest works of architecture in Denver. Recently, CommonWealth Partners, which owns the center, has redecorated the main Sherman Street…
As is his standard practice, Bill Havu, director of his namesake William Havu Gallery in the Golden Triangle, has organized a group show by loosely knitting together the work of three artists and giving it a generic, one-size-fits-all title — in this case, Icons of Our Time. Also typical at…
Gosh, it seems like only yesterday that anyone whose name was Jason was also contemplating his twelfth birthday. Apparently, while I wasn’t paying attention, they grew up. Now Jason is as common an adult name as — oh, I don’t know — Michael. It was surely this preponderance of Jasons…
My eyes have been burning lately, and not just from all the pine-scented forest-fire smoke that’s been in town. Rather, it’s my typical response to the lighter-than-air offerings that fill local venues in the summer. But this silly off season in the art world has its ups as well as…
The beautiful and impressive One Hundred Years of Van Briggle Pottery, at the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum (215 South Tejon Street, Colorado Springs, 1-719-385-5990), has a somewhat misleading title; it might have been better to call it One Hundred Van Briggle Pots. That’s because the exhibit does not fully survey…
Last year, the Denver Art Museum hired John Pultz to be consulting curator of photography, a part-time position in the modern and contemporary department. Pultz’s day job is professor of art history at the University of Kansas, where he’s also a curator at KU’s Spencer Museum. Several years ago, he…
Last month, I met former Denver mayor Quigg Newton, who served from 1947 to 1955. His Honor was being interviewed about his association with Denver painter Vance Kirkland for a documentary about the Kirkland Museum called MuseumMuseum, which will air on KBDI Channel 12. I was there as a creative…
