Yesterday afternoon I went to the Denver Art Museum (the DAM), seen in the photograph on the left, to look around for a few hours and escape the 90-degree temperatures Denver has been experiencing for most of last month. The last time I was there it was to see The Honest Eye: Camille Pissarro's Impressionism, which was a truly excellent exhibit that took place last fall. This time the two major exhibition spaces were closed, and the top exhibits yesterday seemed to be "Knife Fork Spoon, Everyday Tools, Extraordinary Design," and "Conversation Pieces, Stories from the Fashion Archives," both of which I really don't consider art. That evening "Untitled: Artist Takeover," the museum's after-hours quarterly program with local artists and "one-of-a-kind experiences" was going to take place, but I had no intention of staying for that. This event replaced what was once called Final Fridays, which took place monthly and featured a buffet table, a cash bar, and lots of fun talks and tours, many of them quite funny. On one tour I joined, the two guides took us through the Modern and Contemporary Art Gallery and gave us a hilarious interpretation of various artworks. And a pair of comedians would put on a monthly show, portraying the two subjects in the painting titled Self-Portrait with Swimming Coach Charlie Sava. Then the free buffet table went away, the event went from monthly to quarterly, and the discussions turned very serious. After attending this new event several times, hoping to see a return to a more lighthearted evening, I gave up and never went back.
I did very much like an exhibit I saw yesterday called The Tangled Self, seen in the photograph on the right, which I thought was geared towards children, but later learned was designed to "make our inner monsters more approachable." The artist, Sadie Young, graduated from Metropolitan State University of Denver with a BFA and a background in psychology, and soon after founded Spectra Art Space, a woman-owned art gallery and immersive art space. I don't know about walking into the mouths of towering monsters and having it tame feelings like rage, grief, fear, and shame, but that exhibit did make me smile, which I have to admit does tame rage, grief, fear, and shame, at least for a little while.
The Denver Art Museum is most famous for its Native American and Western American art, but as I recall, years ago, their collection of Impressionist painting was fairly limited. However, a while back, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Fredrick C. Hamilton, loaned his collection of Impressionist paintings to the museum for a special exhibition. When the exhibit was about to end, the museum asked if they could keep them. Hamilton, no doubt thinking about how high his insurance premiums were with a house full of Impressionist paintings, said he was willing to donate those paintings if the museum made copies of them to replace the originals, which they happily did. And now the museum has an entire gallery of Impressionist paintings in the Hamilton Building, as seen in the photograph on the left. All in all, a fun day at the DAM, despite the lack of a major exhibition.
