In 2011, don’t expect splashy touring exhibitions at the Denver Art Museum or attention-grabbing homages to popular artists like Pablo Picasso or Claude Monet.
Director Christoph Heinrich decided the museum needed to take a breather from high-profile blockbusters after devoting the second half of this year to one of the biggest art- world names around — King Tut.
Instead, for the first year of exhibitions organized under his leadership, the museum is turning inward, focusing on shows organized internally — most taking advantage of its sometimes underestimated permanent collection.
“After Tut,” Heinrich said, “it’s totally the right moment to make aware what the profile of this museum is — what we can do, what we have and what we’re good at.”
If that sounds like a fancy spin on the museum trying to save money and pare expenses, he insists it isn’t.
The 2011 offerings might not generate the same kind of buzz as those in some other years, he said, but they are every bit as ambitious and, in many ways, more varied.
Although Heinrich has repeatedly spoken of a new emphasis on the permanent collection since his appointment in October, he said that in no way signals a retreat from touring blockbusters.
On tap for 2012 are two traveling shows, which he describes as “extremely ambitious,” hinting that one will center on impressionism.
“It’s not that we say, ‘No more loan shows,’ ” Heinrich said. “Why should we? It’s interesting and it’s fun to bring in things that we don’t have and get people excited.
“On the other hand, I think it’s really time to show off our identity, our own profile.”
The 2011 schedule is based around Heinrich’s strategy to highlight the museum’s signature collections, show off its comprehensive historical, cultural and geographical scope and reach out to new, especially younger audiences.
A fourth component of that strategy is making sure that each annual exhibition schedule includes at least one “beacon,” a large, high-profile offering that will draw a diversity of attendees.
Most years, he said, the museum’s “beacon” presentation would be a major traveling exhibition, but in 2011, it will be a show centered on ceramic objects — “Exquisite Dirt: Summer of Clay.”
It is the first example of the museum-wide themed exhibitions that Heinrich discussed extensively in his first interview after being named director in October.
“It’s a big project,” he said. “It’s something that will cover the whole building, and we’ll put a lot of thought and fantasy into it.”
The show, which will involve nearly every curatorial department at the museum in some way, will include a selection of blue-and-white Asian china and a group of Amazonian clay sculptures from the Frederick and Jan Mayer Collection.
In addition, 10 to 15 contemporary ceramic artists, including a strong contingent from Colorado — long a center of the medium — have been commissioned to create works for the show.
“We really want to say and think clay as a material that is so flexible and can have so many faces that you not think pots,” Heinrich said. “There will be some pots, but it’s not the summer of pots.”
The year’s only traveling exhibition will be a retrospective devoted to Robert Adams, whose quiet, unexpected views of the changing West forever altered the way not just photographers but also artists of all kinds perceive the physical world around them.
Adams, a New Jersey native, moved with his family to Wheat Ridge at age 15 and graduated from Wheat Ridge High School in 1955. He spent most of his life in Colorado before moving in 1997 to Astoria, Wash.
The nationally touring retrospective has been organized by the Yale University Art Gallery, which announced in 2005 its purchase of 1,465 master prints of Adams photographs, giving it a complete holding of his life’s work.
Much as it did with the rehanging of the modern and contemporary galleries in 2008, the museum is treating the Jan. 23 reopening of the museum’s American Indian galleries with all the fanfare of a special exhibition.
The 700 or so other Indian objects in the permanent-collection galleries will go off view June 13, when the galleries close for a six-month renovation and reinstallation. Those pieces will be almost entirely replaced by another rotation of works from the museum’s bountiful 18,000-piece Indian collection.
In all, six major exhibitions are set for 2011, and a few others are in discussion and could be added to the schedule later. Also on the roster is an overview of electronic, video and new media as well as a comprehensive look at the pioneering 20th-century Chinese artist Xu Beihong.
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com
