Even though Christoph Heinrich was appointed curator of modern and contemporary art at the Denver Art Museum just a little more than four months ago and isn’t even on the job full time, he already has a major exhibition tentatively scheduled for 2009.
He wants to commission 15 to 20 artists from around the world to create thematic, site-specific works for a cross-section of the quirky, angular spaces in the new Daniel Libeskind-designed Hamilton Building.
“Given that this architecture is so characteristic and so challenging, I think it will be wonderful to work with artists in this structure,” he said. “I think there is a whole range of rooms between the monumental and the small, intimate cabinet that one can really imagine will fire the imagination of artists.”
Heinrich, 46, chief curator of contemporary art, collections and exhibitions at the Hamburg Kunsthalle in Germany, sounds enthusiastic and clearly is.
“I’ve felt that I’m bringing maybe too many ideas with me,” said the one-time theater student, speaking in virtually flawless English.
After an international search, the museum announced in January that it had chosen him to replace Dianne Vanderlip, who retired that month after founding the modern and contemporary department and heading it for 29 years.
Heinrich returned Tuesday to Germany after spending a few days meeting with director Lewis Sharp and his curatorial colleagues. He plans to spend a week in Denver each month through September, then take over his duties full time in October.
He and his wife, Kira van Lil, an art historian who is set to teach at the University of Colorado at Boulder, plan to live in a loft near Santa Fe Drive and the art district there. But for now, the curator continues to live in Germany, where he is putting finishing touches on his two last projects at the Hamburg museum.
Heinrich oversaw a just-opened retrospective of the contemporary German painter Daniel Richter and is completing an exhibition marking the 10th anniversary of the Kunsthalle’s Gallery of Contemporary Art. It will feature works acquired during the decade.
“That was my baby from the beginning on,” he said, “and that will be a very good finish before I come here. It’ll be opened the 30th of September, and the next day I’m going to check out, and give back my keys and go to the airport.”
Fulfilling a dream
The curator knew he wanted to work in the United States some day, and when the vacancy emerged at the Denver Art Museum, the time seemed right.
“Nowadays the whole contemporary art scene is more or less one global village,” he said. “So it’s not the point whether it’s Europe or whether it’s America or whether it’s China. You see a lot of things everywhere, and that’s one of the charms and one of the advantages of the contemporary art world.”
Heinrich was impressed with Denver, and he also liked the curatorial freedom he found at the art museum, something he suspects does not exist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York or the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
“The Denver Art Museum has a system which gives the curators some liberty in planning their program and preparing their acquisitions,” he said. “You’re working close together with other staff, but as well you have a lot of self-responsibility for your part of the museum.
“The more I learned about the house and the structure, the more I thought it could be absolutely the right structure for me.”
He was also impressed by the broad-based, international collection of more than 5,000 pieces that Vanderlip assembled, noting the collection’s early acquisitions of German paintings from the now super-
trendy New Leipzig School and its fine examples of minimalism by artists such as Dan Flavin, Carl Andre and Sol LeWitt.
Asked about what gaps he sees in the collection, Heinrich took a wait-and-see attitude, saying that he plans to begin an in-depth investigation of the museum’s holdings during his next visit.
“In every collection, you see gaps,” he said. “But so far, I want to know more about the profile before filling gaps. And it’s always more interesting, I think, to strengthen the strengths than to have a little bit of everything.”
Heinrich is already thinking about his first rearrangement of works from the permanent collection on view on the third and fourth floors of the Hamilton Building – a prospect he describes as “fabulous,” because of the holdings’ depth.
Although he knows little about the Colorado art scene, he is quite curious about what is happening in the region.
“I see that there is a lot of energy in the city, and there are good art schools in Boulder and Denver, and I’m very much looking forward to it, as well as knowing more about Western art. The first thing I hope to do this summer already is I’m going to Santa Fe and Taos and seeing a bit more of the West.”
Born in Frankfurt, Heinrich originally intended to become a stage director, enrolling at a prestigious theatrical school in Vienna. But he soon decided his heart wasn’t in it.
“I always went back to the museum to relax and get back to what really interests me in the arts, in history, in psychology and other things,” he said. “And I suddenly realized I prefer being in the museum to being in theater.”
A path to administration
Around the age of 24, he switched to art history, focusing on Renaissance art before gradually migrating to contemporary art. He earned his doctorate at the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, writing his doctoral thesis on the evolution of public monuments in Germany.
“Usually, it’s something you do if you think you shall become an administrator of public-art programs or something like that,” he said, “but it was a subject I really liked because it had to do with history, politics, social issues and media.”
Such catholic interests were another major reason he was drawn to the Denver Art Museum. He liked the possibilities of being involved with a wide-ranging collection.
“I love the idea of an encyclopedic museum,” he said. “I think it can be very inspiring to work with people who are dealing with other art. It sometimes can be a pain in the neck just to be with contemporary art people.”
Fine arts critic Kyle MacMillan can be reached at 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com.
