Director’s 3-pronged plan for DAM: “collection, collection, collection”
After the Denver Art Museum marked the one-year anniversary of its $110 million addition in October and launched a flashy exhibition line-up, director Lewis Sharp summed up its focus for the next five years with three repeated words: “collection, collection, collection.”
“We went through a five-year period when we said we would not focus on the collection but on the new building and the program for the future,” Sharp said. “I’ll come back and say that we’re ready, once again now, to aggressively look at the collection and see that collection grow.”
But even during that recent fallow period, the museum received some big boosts to its holdings. These included a promised bequest of more than 225 contemporary works from Vicki and Kent Logan of Vail and a long-term loan of paintings by Western artist Charles M. Russell from Denver collector Tom Petrie.
Now, the museum wants even more. Sharp said the museum will soon announce two new major acquisitions, and he’s confident growth in the collection will not stop there.
In addition to adding art, the museum plans to use its permanent holdings in a “much more aggressive and dynamic way.” To this end, Sharp envisions small shows drawn from the musem’s collections that would augment and complement its major visiting exhibitions.
In 2009, for example, an ambitious display of two visiting Chinese collections is planned. In conjunction with that offering, he suggested that the museum could show contemporary Chinese works from the Logan collection and present pieces from its collection showing links between Spanish colonial and Asian art explored in a symposium last year.
At the same time, there are opportunities to re-examine and rethink the permanent collection by rotating what is on view. Sharp said Christoph Heinrich, the museum’s new curator of modern and contemporary art, plans to reinstall almost all of his department’s third- and fourth-floor galleries in the Hamilton Building.
“The galleries will be same,” Sharp said. “We’re not going to make a lot of changes physically, and there are some pieces that will remain anchors to those floors. But you can move a lot of other things around up there, and it will give you an entirely different sense of the collection and the way that space engages the collection.”
Reopening the permanent galleries on the seventh-floor of the museum’s original building, the director said, is at the “top of the agenda,” though no timetable has been set.
The floor, which was closed for use as storage and work space during the construction of the museum’s expansion, will be devoted to photography (a search is under way for a curator for that area) and additional works from the Western American collection.
There had been earlier discussions of devoting at least part of that floor to the museum’s extensive collection of textiles, but Sharp said the new strategy is to integrate such holdings into related permanent galleries where appropriate.
Because the museum has expanded the number of temporary exhibition galleries from two to four with the opening of the Hamilton Building, it can present more such offerings than ever. And, as before, all eight departments at the museum will get their “time in the sun.”
But Sharp said there will be a bigger emphasis on contemporary-art shows. He expects a major one at least every other year. While that might not sound like many, the director called it “incredibly ambitious,” considering the paucity of such exhibitions during the previous decade.
“There is an interest in the community,” he said. “There’s an audience that’s hungry for that material.”
In addition, he said, Heinrich plans another series of artist lectures next year as well as periodic rotations of the permanent galleries, including the introduction of drawings, and regular publications and symposiums.
“When you add all that together with the special exhibitions that he is talking about, it becomes a very full and enriched program that he is developing,” Sharp said.
In July 2006, Sharp, who became the museum’s director in 1989, said he would defer his retirement three to five years after the October 2006 opening of the Hamilton building.
In the years remaining, Sharp said he does not plan to defer any major decisions to the next director. He wants to put in a place a rich foundation of programs but also leave some holes in the schedule so that person can quickly begin to put their stamp on the institution.
“I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed being director of the art museum more than I have over the last six months,” he said. “To get back involved with the day-to-day operations of the museum, to be involved with the exhibition planning again, I’m loving it.”
A committee has not yet been formed to seek Sharp’s replacement, said Frederic Hamilton, chairman of the museum’s board of trustees, but initial discussions have taken place.
“Our thought and intention is that during this intervening period in the next four years that we will begin to look at and then finally identify someone that’s capable of replacing Lewis,” he said. “He’s an absolutely outstanding guy, and he’s going to be damned hard to replace.”
Contemporary museum shifts to a local artist, put within a global context
After presenting primarily thematic exhibitions for most of its 11-year history, the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver will focus almost exclusively on solo exhibitions in the five primary galleries and two subsidiary spaces in its new $15.9 million building.
The emphasis will be on vanguard art produced within the past 10 years, with a particular emphasis on work not previously exhibited and installations created specifically for the light-infused structure at 15th and Delgany streets.
“It’s a global program,” said Cydney Payton, pictured at right, the museum’s executive director and chief curator. “It’s no longer local, national and international. I think we have converted the language of the art world into this idea of migratory intellectual exchanges between artists and curators and museums.”
With the Oct. 28 opening behind them and already about 7,000 visitors logged as of last week, museum leaders have shifted their attention to the future and the activation of a multifaceted series of activities and offerings designed to reach people of all ages and backgrounds.
“We looked at our audience from the very beginning,” Payton said, “and everything has been engineered, both the physical plant of the museum and its program, towards exciting and challenging our myriad of audiences, not just one kind of audience.”
Because the museum is not a collecting institution, exhibitions will remain its prime focus. It’s ever-rotating cycle of offerings will begin in February, as the components of the opening show are replaced on a segmented basis.
Payton is not ready to name the artists who will be shown, but she did say the museum plans to put an increased emphasis on Colorado artists, presenting them in in-depth solo exhibitions within the overarching global context.
“I’ve done a lot of thematic shows that have included Colorado artists and, now, I’m very excited to be able to offer really master exhibitions of some of these premier talents,” she said.
Although she declined to give specifics, Payton said the next artist featured in the museum’s second-floor projects gallery, will be a local artist. And it is possible that he or she will live in the space for several weeks.
Virtually all the exhibitions will be organized in-house, meaning that the museum will rarely if ever be a stop on touring shows organized by other institutions.
Asked where the much-publicized, still-traveling contemporary exhibition, “Life After Death: New Leipzig Paintings from the Rubell Family Collection,” might be shown if it were to come to Denver, Payton pointed to the Denver Art Museum as the logical venue.
In conjunction with such a presentation, she said, MCA/Denver could present a solo show by an artist related to those artists, such as German painter Suzanne Kuhn, who will be showcased next year in the large-works gallery.
“That would be incredibly dynamic, because what an opportunity for the audience,” Payton said.
To accompany most of the displays, Payton plans an aggressive program of publications. She foresees catalogs of some 50 pages, which will put the emphasis on images and comments by the artists themselves.
“What’s exciting is to have the dialogue — the discourse coming directly from the artist,” she said. “That’s the whole premise — that I’m trying to reclaim the voice of the artist back into museum curatorial practice.”
The publications will be part of the Logan Conversations, Correspondences and Collaborations Series, which is funded with a $150,000 gift from nationally known art collectors Kent and Vicki Logan of Vail.
The three-year program will also involve discussions between artists and curators and collaborations involving the museum’s three artists-in-residence each year, who will typically be at the museum from three to six weeks.
Another key program will be the museum’s two-track educational outreach for adults and K-12 students. For the next five years, those efforts will be organized under a kind of research project titled MI5, which relates to the multiple intelligences theory of Howard Gardner, Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at Harvard University.
The museum plans to explore ways that museumgoers can relate to the art on view using five of Gardner’s eight intelligences — linguistic, mathematical, musical, spatial and kinesthetic.
“I think people need to hear about the level of experimentation that the museum’s interested in,” Payton said.
Among the museum’s varied other offerings will be the Open Shelf program. Presenting a contemporary approach to a museum library, exhibited artists will assemble a shelf of books, DVDs and other objects that speak in some way to their inspiration.
“When (architect) David (Adjaye) and I were thinking about the building, it was always envisioned as a city,” Payton said. “And I think it will feel like it’s an explosion of city life that is defined by creativity — visual and intellectual stimulus.”
Fine arts critic Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com
