For nearly a decade leading up to 2006, the overriding goal that pushed the Denver Art Museum forward was clear: the conception, funding and construction of its $110 million addition.
Now the people of Denver have what they helped birth: a jutting, pointy, ocean liner of a building that has been both praised internationally as an architectural wonder and derided as a confusing container for displaying art.
Mission, for better and worse, accomplished.
The massive expansion set the stage for the institution’s next big act: Would the giant, new museum host even bigger blockbuster shows? Would it shine a brighter spotlight on its own holdings? Would it shape some new identity?
Surprisingly, we still don’t know.
Some 2 1/2 years later, the museum has yet to lay out a clear plan for its future. And the question remains: What will be the Denver Art Museum 2.0?
Like most things, the answer — at least at the moment — comes down to one man: museum director Lewis Sharp, a shrewd, genial facilitator who, during his 20-year tenure, has taken a backwater museum and made it a national player.
Given the mammoth effort that the addition required and the career climax it represented for Sharp, now 67, staff members and observers in the museum world long assumed he would retire shortly after its completion. He added to the momentum by suggesting such a plan himself in 2004.
Then a change of heart: A few months before the Hamilton building opened in October 2006, Sharp made it clear that he planned to stay in his post for an additional three to five years.
But other than expressing a vague desire to put increased emphasis on the museum’s permanent collection, Sharp’s post-expansion plans — at least those articulated publicly — for piloting the institution forward have been hazy at best.
And for the museum-going public, the future matters.
Financial donors ought to know if their contributions are supporting temporary shows, educational outreach or new works for the Asian collection. Folks considering a donation of a pop painting deserve to know whether contemporary art is going to remain a key focus.
Moreover, the public — which helps fund the museum through grants and tax exemptions (and last year joined out-of-state visitors in racking up 553,432 admissions) — should have a clear idea of what it is paying for.
Indeed, it does not seem unfair to say that the museum seems adrift. Not helping matters has been the lack of a firm timeline for Sharp’s retirement (he now says it will be in the next two years) or a plan for his replacement.
“I think there will be a moment in time that the trustees and the institution will say, ‘This is the appropriate time to make some of those transitions,’ but I will stay with it until everyone feels this is the right time,” Sharp said in a Post interview in July 2006.
It appears that time has come. In April, the museum announced that Cathey McClain Finlon, a former advertising executive and a longtime board member, would step into the new, temporary position of interim president and lead the search for Sharp’s successor.
As part of that process, Finlon, who exudes businesslike purposefulness, will oversee the development of a strategic plan. It will lay out a direction for the museum’s future and help define the kind of director that makes sense for the institution as its prepares to set a new course.
Many of the issues facing the museum — and Sharp’s eventual replacement — are shared by institutions across the country. They include overcoming a lingering recession that has hurt funding and forced cutbacks (the museum trimmed $2.5 million from its $21.3 million fiscal 2009 budget in January) and trying to remain relevant in a time of fast-changing technologies, leisure habits and demographic shifts.
But significant, long-term questions specific to this institution also loom — questions that the museum’s board and the next director will have to address:
On what collecting areas should the museum put the greatest emphasis?
In the last several years under Sharp, it has been clear from levels of funding and attention that European and American art, modern and contemporary art, and Western art have been the priorities. Think the great Claude Monet, pop Japanese fun maker Takashi Murakami and classic, Western scenery painter Charles Russell.
But do these concentrations make sense, considering that the greatest strengths of the museum’s collection lie elsewhere? The institution has a collection of Spanish colonial art that is rivaled in scope internationally only by the Museum of the Americas in Madrid. These paintings offer fascinating glimpses at life in Central America and South America in the three centuries after the Spanish conquest, combining rich, old-master- style techniques with distinctive indigenous touches such as inlaid feathers.
Should the museum work harder to define and promote a distinctive identity?
Ask members of the Denver public what the museum’s strengths are or what sets it apart from other institutions, and it’s likely that many respondents could not answer.
One compelling profile might be packaging the institution as this country’s top showcase of the art of the Americas. An argument can be made that no other institution can present a more complete picture of the totality of North, Central and South American art, from the carved wood totems of the Northwest Coast Indians to Mayan vases to Frederic Remington paintings.
What should the museum do with its architecture, design and graphics department?
One year after arriving at the museum, Sharp oversaw the creation of this new collecting area, luring one of his colleagues from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to build its holdings from virtually nothing to 4,000 objects — everything from an architectural model for Robert Venturi’s 1985-91 wing of the National Gallery in London to an elaborate, 18th-century console table.
The idea was to capitalize on a field ignored by most art museums and one where objects are still available at relatively affordable prices.
In 2002, the museum organized the show, “U.S. Design 1975-2000,” one of the first attempts by an American art museum to map that exciting quarter century. But since curator R. Craig Miller’s departure in 2007, the once fast- growing collection has lain strangely fallow, and the museum has announced no plans for his replacement.
That same year, the museum became the repository of the American Institute for Graphic Arts’ 6,000-piece collection of award-winning design since 1980, and hired Darrin Alfred to oversee it and temporarily head the entire department. But how the two sets of holdings will function together, and what is to become of what was once the museum’s fastest growing department, remains unknown.
Backing Sharp’s words, should the museum put greater focus on its underappreciated permanent collection, which takes viewers on a visual journey around the world and, in some areas, provides examples that equal those on view anywhere?
During Sharp’s tenure, much of the museum’s attention has been directed toward attention-grabbing temporary exhibitions. But with the increased cost of such shows and their drain on museum staff from installers to security personnel, it seems to make more sense than ever to capitalize on the museum’s own unique holdings.
This could range from major temporary exhibitions to more frequent, more creative rotations of the permanent displays and greater effort to showcase new acquisitions. Why not a small gallery where the public could always count on seeing something new — a recently added painting or sculpture displayed in a focused show with useful background and context?
Should the museum restructure its leadership?
Sharp has been both the artistic and administrative head of the museum. But the annual budget has grown from $6.5 million to $24 million during his tenure, and the museum’s operations are now much more complex with the addition of three departments and more emphasis on education, publications and technology.
Should the museum adopt a structure in which the artistic and administrative duties are divided? Some museums, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, have adopted variations of such a hierarchy — with varying success.
“As we go through our process of examining who will be the next director and what the roles and responsibilities are, that’s a possibility,” Finlon said. “But I can’t say that anybody’s certain about that by any means.”
How can the museum make the most productive use of the Hamilton Building?
Even its biggest admirers have to concede that its slanted walls, sloped ceilings and irregular configurations offer substantial challenges to displaying art.
Does exhibiting, for example, a portion of the Western collection on the second floor make the best use of that space, or would some other body of work, such as the design collection, make more sense there? How can the museum better integrate the expansion and the original building, a whimsical 1971 architectural gem by Gio Ponti, and ensure that visitors spread their time across both structures?
How the museum and its next director answer these and other pressing questions will set the look and feel of the institution for the next decade — and determine whether it stumbles or succeeds.
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com
About that leaky roof
The Denver Art Museum hopes to have the long-running repairs to the roof of the Hamilton Building completed by early fall, a spokeswoman said last week.
Shortly after the jutting, angled structure opened in October 2006, water began leaking into the four-story atrium, with its sharply sloped ceilings and skylights, causing minor damage.
After temporary repairs, permanent resurfacing of the building’s roof began in 2008, and it is being completed this summer. To protect passersby and visitors, scaffolding has been placed over the building’s entrance and some surrounding areas have been blocked off.
The work is being handled under the original building contract, with no additional cost to the museum.
Kyle MacMillan
