Now that the Denver Art Museum’s Frederic C. Hamilton Building is up and running and the almost nonstop opening festivities are over, the natural question is: What’s next?
Other than its revelation in September of one upcoming show, the art museum is not saying. But Director Lewis Sharp promises that in a few weeks, the institution will announce the full schedule of temporary exhibitions for the next three years.
“I think people are going to be thrilled when they look at the full range of exhibitions,” Sharp said, “because it’s a very, very complete program that includes almost all of the departments. I’m very excited about it.”
Sharp said the museum deliberately put off the announcement until after the expansion opened and staff members had a chance to catch their breath. The institution also waited so it could unveil all the shows at once.
“What we want to do is, rather than having things come out piecemeal and you can’t see or understand the full program,” Sharp said, “we’re trying to package it in such way that it is most meaningful and really shows what a thoughtful program it’s going to be.”
Among the offerings that will be revealed is “Color as Field: American Painting, 1950-75,” an assembly of about 50 works by such major figures as Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Julies Olitski, Larry Poons and Frank Stella.
Touring under the auspices of the American Federation of Arts, it will be on view in Denver from Nov. 9, 2007, through Feb. 3, 2008, and then travel to the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., and Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, Tenn.
Several weeks ago, the museum revealed that it has entered a partnership with the High Museum of Art in Atlanta to present three exhibitions featuring works from the Louvre in Paris, one of the world’s great museums.
The first offering, “Artisans & Kings: Selected Treasures from the Louvre,” will run Oct. 6, 2007, through Jan. 6, 2008. It will include more than 75 objects, focusing primarily on decorative objects but also including paintings by such masters as Rubens, Titian and Velázquez.
The exhibition will chronicle the relationships between French artisans and kings during the reigns of Louis XIV, XV and XVI and explore how the royal collections came to be the core of the Louvre’s holdings.
Two future exhibitions from the French museum are scheduled for 2008 and 2009.
“It’s always hard work for us to organize great-quality exhibitions,” Sharp said, “and they were prepared to see that in this series of exhibitions that there really would be first-rate material and that they would tell something of the story of the Louvre and the range of the collection.”
Stumbling blocks
When people got a chance to finally tour the art museum’s finished expansion, one minor yet noticeable aspect of the interior caused a small stir: barriers placed on the floor to keep people from walking into overhanging walls and angled corners.
Not only do such “curbs,” as the museum terms them, make sense, they were mandated by the city agency that oversees local compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
What has rightly drawn criticism is how they look. The 4-inch-tall barriers are made of wood, a material that seems at odds with the building’s titanium exterior and hard interior surfaces, and they have been left a light, natural color that clashes with the dark floors.
Reader Susan Turetzky of Denver put it well in a recent e-mail: “It was such a tacky, ‘duct tape’-type fix and stood out like a sore thumb against all the other beauty.”
Dan Kohl, the museum’s director of design, laughed when he heard that description. The barriers were in no way meant to be temporary, he said, but at the same time, the institution plans to revisit all aspects of the building after studying how they function with people in the spaces.
“We want to see how people use it,” he said of the barrier system. “And, then, if it doesn’t work for any number of reasons, it’s not permanent. You lift it off the floor and try something else.”
Fine arts critic Kyle MacMillan can be reached at 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com.
