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The Denver Art Museum is an art museum in Denver, Colorado located in Denver's Civic Center. It is known for its collection of American Indian art, and has a comprehensive collection of works from across the world with a total of more than 55,000 pieces. History of the Museum Collections The museum has eight 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 & sculpture (European and American); Western art; and textile art. Architecture, Design & 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. The 20th-century design galleries on the second floor are currently closed, due to the impact of the construction of the Hamilton Building. 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 Bayer collection and archive, an important Bauhaus artistic and scholarly resource, containing some 2,500 items including works by artists such as Andy Warhol and David Hockney 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 DeAndrea, is a life-size realistic sculpture of a sleeping woman. Made of polyvinyl, 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). Native American The museum has an internationally-known collection of American Indian art, with over 16,000 works representing over 100 tribes across North America. 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 is important in the fact that it exhibits these items as art, rather than anthropological artifacts. 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 This collection is not currently on display, until the opening of the Frederic C. Hamilton Building in fall 2006. African This collection is not currently on display, until the opening of the Frederic C. Hamilton Building in fall 2006. New World (pre-Columbian and Spanish Colonial) Among the 5,000-plus objects from these collections displayed in The Jan and Frederick Mayer Galleries of Pre-Columbian and Spanish Colonial Art are pre-Columbian works of ceramic, stone, gold and jade, as well as paintings, sculpture, furniture and silver from the Spanish Colonial Period. The Frederick and Jan Mayer Center for Pre-Columbian and Spanish Colonial Art is considered to be one of the most significant in North America. Internationally, there is no other museum where one can see examples of the major stylistic movements from all the geographic areas and cultures of Latin America. Pre-Columbian The museum's pre-Columbian collection represents nearly every major culture in Mesoamerica, Central America, and South America, with particular strengths in Peruvian, Ecuadorian, and Maya ceramics. Its greatest strength, however, is in the arts of Central America. Through an innovative study gallery design, 100% of the museum's pre-Columbian collection is on display. The collection includes works in ceramic, stone, gold and jade. Spanish Colonial The Spanish Colonial collection of paintings, silver, santos, and other art objects covers the broad geographic areas of Latin America, with the art of Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Mexico, and the Southwestern United States represented. Painting & Sculpture (European & 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 Monet, Matisse, Picasso, and Georgia O'Keefe. 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 British artists such as Thomas Gainsborough, Edward Lear and other artists of the English School that covers a period of 6 centuries. 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 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's In the Enemy's Country, Frederic Remington's The Cheyenne, and Charles Deas' 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 Frederick Remington, Charles M Russell, Frank E. Schoonover, and Frank Tenney Johnson as well as more modern interpreters of American & Western art, such as Gerald Curtis Delano, Harvey Dunn and Ross Stefan. Selected Past Exhibitions Education The museum’s Education Department has taken a leading role both nationally and internationally in 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 Museum to the Henry Ford Museum. Funding The museum is run by a non-profit organization separate from the City of Denver. Major funding for the museum is provided by a 0.1% sales tax levied in the Science and Cultural Facilities District(SCFD), which includes seven Colorado counties in the Denver-Aurora metropolitan area. 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, the Denver Zoo, and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science). In addition, the museum receives large private donations and loans from private collections. Over the past five years, the Denver Art Museum has averaged 465,00 visitors a year. Total revenues for the Museum in 2003 were $23 million. Construction Photos | |||||||
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