Even if you’ve seen the soon-to-close Tut show and toured the rest of the Denver Art Museum in the past year or so, you’re probably not caught up on everything on view there.
With little fanfare, the museum has redone two galleries and opened two small, focused exhibitions of contemporary realism and photography in the past two months.
And though it’s been on display a bit longer, a solo look at German artist Marc Brandenburg has flown under the radar.
These five offerings cut a wide artistic swath historically, geographically and stylistically, and at least one is bound to appeal to nearly every taste, including those visiting relatives you have to entertain over the holidays.
To make things easier, the museum is open nearly every day during the holidays, including New Year’s Day, and because of the Tut show, hours have been liberally extended for the Hamilton Building.
So, if you’re Tutted out, here are five other reasons to visit the Denver Art Museum during the next week and into the new year.
Oceanic art
The Oceanic gallery on the third floor of the Hamilton Building has been reinstalled, with about 60 percent of the pieces coming from storage, including some that have never been shown before.
Some of the glass cases that monopolized the space before have been removed, and about half the objects are presented on uncovered platforms and pedestals, giving the gallery a much larger, more open feel.
“It was time to begin to show more parts of our collection,” said Nancy Blomberg, curator of native arts. “We have about a thousand pieces, and some really nice, large pieces, which we were not really able to display in the cases we had before.”
Contemporary drawing
By using one medium to suggest another, German artist Marc Brandenburg defies viewer expectations and creates enigmatic, if unquestionably distinctive, works in the process.
The concept is simple, even if the results aren’t. Brandenburg creates black-and-white drawings that are essentially the equivalent of photographic negatives. Although they look like they were created in Photoshop, they are painstakingly rendered in graphite.
This group of 30 drawings, on loan from private collections in Europe, is Brandenburg’s first solo museum exhibition in the United States. It can be seen through Feb. 20 in the modern and contemporary department’s third-floor works-on-paper gallery.
Contemporary realism
An exhibition titled “Western Horizons: Landscapes from the Contemporary Realism Collection” celebrates the 20th anniversary of the art museum’s Contemporary Realism Group.
Funds supplied by the members of this support group have led to the purchase of about 50 pieces by living artists, some working in styles rooted in 19th-century romanticisms and others showing a more progressive bent.
The 25 paintings, drawings and original prints by such artists as Clyde Aspevig, Donald Coen, Chuck Forsman, Leon Loughridge and Barbara Putnam will remain on view for about nine months on the second floor of the Hamilton Building.
Photography
After inaugurating the seventh-floor photography gallery with a wide-ranging overview of the museum’s holdings in the medium, the question was: What would make a good follow-up?
It might have seemed logical to focus on a popular photographer like Ansel Adams or Edward Weston, but curator Eric Paddock chose to spotlight a Colorado photographer who has been largely ignored: Robert Benjamin. His subtle, unprepossessing images of family and everyday life can be seen through May 29 in an exhibition subtitled “Notes from a Quiet Life.”
Design
For the first time since the 2007 departure of curator R. Craig Miller, the design galleries on the second floor of the museum’s original building have been completely overhauled.
A long-running display of chairs has been replaced with a more diverse offering titled “What is Modern?” While it, too, includes a broad selection of chairs, they are shown in context with lamps, coffee tables, posters and a range of other complementary objects.
Also on view is “Olivetti: Innovation and Identity,” a compact overview of the high-level design that has long distinguished the famed Italian company’s business machines and marketing materials.
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com
