This story was originally published in The Denver Post on Sept. 23, 2001.
The big surprise in the Denver Art Museum’s announcement
Wednesday of allocation of exhibition space in a planned $62.5
million addition was the decision to put its holdings of Western
American art front and center.
They will occupy 11,000 square feet on the addition’s second
floor (not the first floor as I erroneously reported Thursday),
and it will be the first work from the museum’s permanent
collection that visitors will see upon entering through a new main
entrance in the addition.
Just as important, visitors will have to pass through the
Western displays to get to the passageway that will connect the
new 146,000-square-foot building with the museum’s existing 1971
structure, which was designed by Italian architect Gio Ponti.
“It’s exciting, and it makes so much sense,” said Ann Daley,
associate curator of painting and sculpture who soon will shift to
the museum’s newly created Institute of Western American Art.
“The fine things that we have, people will want to see in the
new building,” she said. “And it makes such an interesting mix in
the building to have our heritage, the things that people come to
Denver to see so often and until now have had a little hard time
finding.”
As Director Lewis Sharp said Wednesday, such a placement also
provides as a natural art-historical link to the museum’s holdings
of Native American art, which will be on display across 13th
Avenue on the first and second floors of the Ponti building.
At the same time, though, Sharp made it clear that Western
art would not have been given such a prominent space if the
museum’s holdings had not been significantly boosted in June by a
donation from Bill and Dorothy Harmsen and their Golden-based
foundation.
“Prior to that,” he said, “we just didn’t have the depth for
the Western collection to be that vehicle.”
Not long ago, Western art was a small and almost overlooked
part of the museum’s holdings. But this plan to put the Western
collection into such a highly visible location is just the latest
sign of its fast-rising profile within the institution.
Only two months ago, the museum announced the establishment
of the Institute of Western Art. It is essentially a new
curatorial department, but museum leaders chose to call it an
institute to emphasize the importance they place on it.
Other news from Wednesday’s meeting with reporters:
Lewis said he anticipates no increase in the $62.5 million
budget for the Daniel Libeskind-designed addition, which will be
funded by a bond issue that Denver voters approved in November
1999.
“This building will be built for $62.5 million,” he said. “I
have never dealt with a more responsible and responsive team than
I have with Davis Partnership and Libeskind, and we are on budget.”
Once the museum addition is completed as projected in 2005,
Lewis hopes the museum can turn its attention to renovating the
14,000-square-foot Morgan wing, which houses a restaurant and
special-events room among other spaces on the southeast side of
the museum’s main towers.
“We need to bring that,” he said, “into the same quality of
presentation that the Libeskind building is going to be, and
ideally we would like Libeskind to do that. And we think that is
about a $6 million project.”
Included in that figure will be the addition of a second
floor, which will encompass two small galleries with a total of
6,000 square feet, and a total overhaul of all of the current
facilities.
But he made it clear bond money will not be used for such a
project. The museum will have to raise additional funds to cover
this work as well as planned reconfigurations of galleries in the
Ponti building.
Lewis announced the museum probably will not fill its deputy
director position, vacated in July by Joan Carpenter Troccoli, who
became the director and curator of the Institute of Western
American Art.
“I’m presently doing,” he said, “a pretty intensive review of
the organization of the museum, and I would think that certainly
by the new year, we’ll announce how we’re going to restructure.
“But I believe, as a museum director, that I’ve got a good team
in place, and I’m less inclined to bring a new person in than to
restructure our responsibilities and carry forward on this
(building) project.”
Kyle Mac Millan’s column appears every other Sunday in
Arts & Entertainment, alternating with Bret Saunders’ column on
jazz. You can reach him at kmacmillan@denverpost.com or at
303-820-1675.
