This year the Denver Art Museum’s Green Team will hold our second annual Sustainability Fair on Friday, April 5, but visitors can explore connections to sustainability in the museum's galleries every day. Here are a few examples from our curatorial staff to seek out on your next visit. What other DAM artworks do you feel connect to sustainability or environmental consciousness? Let us know on Facebook or Instagram.
Everything below on view is included with general admission, which is free for members and everyone 18 and under.
Herbert Bayer, World Geo-Graphic Atlas: A Composite of Man’s Environment, Conservation of Resources (page 280), 1953. Offset color lithograph on paper. Printed by the Container Corporation America, Chicago. Gift of Joella Bayer, BA.197.1976.16.
El Anatsui (Ewe), Rain Has No Father?, 2008. Found bottle tops and copper wire; 153 x 239 in. Denver Art Museum: Funds from Native Arts acquisition fund, U.S. Bank, Richard and Theresa Davis, Douglas Society, Denver Art Museum Volunteer Endowment, Alex Cranberg and Susan Morris, Geta and Janice Asfaw, Saron and Daniel Yohannes, Lee McIntire, Milroy and Sheryl Alexander, Dorothy and Richard Campbell, Wayne Carey and Olivia Thompson, Morris Clark, Rebecca H. Cordes, Kenneth and Rebecca Gart, Tim and Bobbi Hamill, Kalleen and Robert Malone, Meyer and Geri Saltzman, Ann and Gerry Saul, Mary Ellen and Thomas Williams, Nancy and James Williams, Forrest Cason, First Western Trust Bank, Howard and Sandy Gelt, Gene Osborne, Boettcher Foundation, John and Eve Glesne, The Schlegel White Foundation, Jeffrey and Nancy Balter, and Tamara Banks, 2008.891. © El Anatsui
Niki Hastings-McFall, Sāmoan and Pākehā (European), born 1959, lives and works in West Auckland, Aotearoa (New Zealand), No Man Is an Island (With Atomic Rainbow), 2023. Mixed media. © Niki Hastings-McFall. Installation photo © Denver Art Museum.
Navajo artist, Rug, before 1950. Woven wool; 65 x 66 ½ in. Denver Art Museum: Native Arts acquisitions fund, 1950.186
Kathryn Spence (German American, born 1963), Untitled, 2001–06. Mixed media; 56 x 48 x 49 in. Denver Art Museum: Gift of Stephen Wirtz Gallery and the artist in honor of Senator Nancy Spence, 2012.276A-U. © Kathryn Spence
Fazal Sheikh, installation view of In Place (Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, Four Corners Region), 2017-2020. Sixty-three pigment inkjet prints. Installation also includes seismological sound recordings of landform readings by geologist Jeffrey Ralson Moore and an offering from Diné elder Jonah Yellowman and his daughter Trina Yellowman. © Fazal Sheikh
Architecture and Design
Herbert Bayer's World Geo-Graphic Atlas: A Composite of Man’s Environment, published in 1953, stands as a pioneering work that anticipated the modern age of infographics. In undertaking the atlas, Bayer addressed many environmental concerns. He confronted the topic in considerable detail, calling readers’ attention to the impossibility of sustaining humanity’s demand with Earth’s dwindling supply of natural resources. The final illustration is a graphic summary of population growth in relation to resource conservation. The graphic estimates that the world’s population would reach 3.016 billion in 2000. It in fact reached 6.114 billion.
Arts of Africa
El Anatsui's use of liquor bottle tops as raw materials in Rain Has No Father? has historical references and implications for recycling and environmental protection.
Arts of Oceania
No Man Is an Island (with Atomic Rainbow) by Niki Hastings-McFall (Sāmoan and Pākehā (European)) is a meditation on the complexity of Pasifika identities and the threats to Pacific Environments, like climate change and nuclear testing, that are transforming our world.
Indigenous Arts of North America
The creation and embroidery of textiles hold deep meaning and purpose for Pueblo communities. They are created for ceremonial purposes and worn as part of rituals centered on agricultural cycles and with the intention of maintaining a proper balance with nature.
Modern and Contemporary Art
Kathryn Spence uses art as a tool for environmental awareness in works that record the transformations of inert and decaying pieces of trash into art. Untitled is created from heaps of trash that Spence carefully sorted and organized, exemplifying her creative process.
Photography
The In Place installation in Fazal Sheikh: Thirst | Exposure | In Place allows visitors to experience the Bears Ears region in southeastern Utah through multiple senses and perspectives. This collaborative installation brings together images by photographer Fazal Sheikh, seismological sound recordings by geologist Jeffrey Ralston Moore, and a blessing and offering by Diné (Navajo) elder Jonah Yellowman and his daughter Trina Yellowman. Collectively, the work seeks to promote healing, contemplation, and connection to the land.
