Visiting The DAM On a Dreary Tuesday Afternoon

I visited the Denver Art Museum (the DAM) this past Tuesday afternoon to check out Personal Geographies, a new photography exhibit featuring work by Trent David Bailey and Brian Adams, divided into two galleries. The theme of the exhibit was how these photographers express their relationship to a region or place through photographs. Bailey photographed both people and landscapes in and around Hotchkiss and Paonia, Colorado, where he spent summers with his relatives as a child, while Adams photographed Arctic landscapes and Inuit people in the far Northwest of Alaska. It was definitely worth a visit, and I recommend seeing it. And by the way, the photograph on the left is of the DAM's Frederick C. Hamilton Building, designed by Daniel Libeskind and continuing the museum's legacy of bold (i.e. weird) architecture.

After viewing Personal Geographies, I immediately headed to the Modern and Contemporary Galleries on the 3rd and 4th floors of the Hamilton Building to see if the museum might have decided, after so many years, to finally put Modigliani's Portrait de Femme, one of the most famous paintings in their collection, back on display. And, of course, the answer was no. They can have a video of a naked guy covered in salt crawling through the wilderness, and having wild elk lick it off, but not Portrait de Femme. Go figure. But this time I submitted a comment card, asking very politely why the hell that painting has been hidden away all these years. I have not yet heard back. Surprise! In any case, they did have an exhibt in that gallery featuring portraits of people living in New Mexico, taken by a photographer originally from Iran, as seen in the photograph on the right. It was interesting, but no Portrait de Femme. 

And, of course, being the Denver Art Museum, there was an exhibit called Space Command, by artist Chris Bagley, described as an immersive installation "probing boundless mysteries of space," which to me is another one of those exhibits that I really don't consider art. It is like Star Wars and the Power of Costume, which really attracted big crowds to the DAM, and Paris to Hollywood: The Fashion and Influence of Veronique and Gregory Peck. Is it really art, or just a way of attracting big crowds to the museum? Regardless, May The Force Be With You.