After presenting a display of 20 monumental sculptures by Henry Moore, one of the best known and most popular artists of the past century, what do you do for a follow-up?
That’s the question that has faced the Denver Botanic Gardens, which since March has been the host of “Moore in the Gardens,” the largest and most ambitious art exhibition it has ever mounted.
This week, officials announced the answer: Allan Houser, a Chiricahua Apache sculptor who spent much of his life in Santa Fe, where his studio and foundry and an adjacent visitor center remain open to the public.
The gardens will exhibit 25 bronze sculptures by the late artist from May 1 to Oct. 16, 2011 — with 24 works on loan from his family collection and another from the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center.
Although Lisa Eldred, director of exhibitions, believes that there will be considerable regional interest in Houser, she acknowledges that he is not as widely recognized as Moore.
“Like any museum,” Eldred said, “and the gardens is a museum, there is an ebb and flow with traveling exhibitions and their magnitude, and balancing that with local and regional resources versus national or international shows.”
Houser (1914-1994) drew inspiration from the human figure and Southwestern landscape, devoting the latter part of his career to hundreds of sculptures — some realistic, others semi-abstracted in the vein of Moore.
“Houser was a big fan of Moore’s works,” Eldred said, “and some of his works actually relate visually to Moore’s modernist aesthetic. Houser was a modernist himself.”
Houser’s works can be found in public collections around the world, including those of the Centre Pompidou in Paris; National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C.; and the Denver Art Museum.
“His name stands within the realm of art history as not only a prominent Apache artist but a prominent modern artist,” Eldred said.
