Final Friday!

After a two month hiatus due to the holidays, the Denver Art Museum (The DAM) has started it's Final Friday program for 2017.  As usual, my first stop was the free hors d'oeuvres table, where I filled up on chips and salsa, cheese, tomatoes, and celery.  When I first started attending these events, they actually served hot items, but that was stopped soon afterwards.  I wonder if was because I would go back 5 or 10 times for refills?  Nah.

After my stop at the buffet table I went up to the 7th floor of the North Building (the Ponti Building) to check out the Photography Gallery. For the past 8 months - Yes! Eight months! -  Landscape Photographs by O'Sullivan & Bell, 1871-1874 was on display.  I realize how difficult it was to take these photographs back then, but frankly, I found them pretty boring, and certainly not worth an 8 month run.  In any case, the gallery was closed when I got there, so hopefully something new will be on exhibit soon. And the trip up to the 7th floor was not a total waste - I went down one floor and checked out the European collection, including the late 1400s painting on the right by a follower of Hieronymus Bosch.  It depicts what happens to people on Judgement Day if they make pigs of themselves at the buffet table.

The highlight of the evening was a curator tour of the museum's Glory of Venice exhibit.  This show features works by Giovanni Bellini, Titian, and Carpaccio, among many others. Nineteen of these paintings are from the Gallerie Dell'Accademia in Venice. The museum recently changed directors, and one of the first things the new director said when he took over was "where the hell are all our paintings?" He made it clear that the museum would never do that again, and so Denver is lucky it got the exhibit when it did.  Bellissimo!