I’m incredibly proud of my colleagues’ exhibitions this year [that] showcase the museum’s commitment to diverse perspectives and meaningful storytelling.
Darrin Alfred, Curator of Architecture and Design
1. The Denver Art Museum’s Biophilia: Nature Reimagined and the Denver Botanic Gardens’ River's Voice: Textiles by Alexandra Kehayoglou – Two significant exhibitions this summer highlighted humanity’s bond with nature. At the DAM, Biophilia: Nature Reimagined invited visitors to reconnect with nature through architecture, art, and design, featuring Alexandra Kehayoglou’s newly acquired Bajío (2024), a hand-tufted wool rug reflecting cultural heritage and memory. Meanwhile, the Denver Botanic Gardens’ River’s Voice presented Kehayoglou’s immersive large-scale textiles, creating a culturally rich moment that bridged themes of ecology, design, and identity.
2. Spotlighting underrepresented voices in design: Liberatory Living and Reclaiming My Time – Two groundbreaking exhibitions explored design’s power to shape identity and resilience. At the Museum of the African Diaspora, Liberatory Living: Protective Interiors & Radical Black Joy, curated by Key Jo Lee, showcased contemporary Black designers reimagining spaces for safety and belonging. At the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History & Culture, Reclaiming My Time, curated by Michelle Joan Wilkinson, emphasized rest and leisure through seating design, celebrating cultural heritage and histories of resilience.
3. Denver’s architectural evolution: Studio Gang’s Populus – The completion of Populus, designed by Studio Gang, marked a milestone in Denver’s architectural landscape. As the first carbon-positive hotel in the US, it combines biomimetic design inspired by aspen trees with sustainability and urban innovation. Populus exemplifies Denver’s growing reputation as a design-forward city and heralds Studio Gang’s continuing contributions to shaping the city’s future.
4. Reflecting past and future in design: DAM acquisitions of the View-Master Model G and Salvage Series Chair – The DAM’s acquisitions this year celebrated both historic innovation and forward-thinking design. Charles Harrison’s View-Master Model G (see an example in the MoMA collection) represents a pivotal moment in industrial design, showcasing his legacy as one of the first African American designers to revolutionize consumer products. Jay Sae Jung Oh’s Salvage Series Chair reimagines discarded objects as sculptural forms, blending sustainability and artistry. Together, these works reflect the DAM’s dual strategy of honoring design’s past while championing its future.
5. Bauhaus Typography at 100 at the Resnick Center for Herbert Bayer Studies and Global Bauhaus Celebrations – Bauhaus Typography at 100, organized by the Letterform Archive, explored the transformative power of Bauhaus design, showcasing Herbert Bayer’s groundbreaking work. Globally, Bauhaus retrospectives and publications highlighted the movement’s enduring influence. Bayer’s legacy, particularly in shaping Aspen as a cultural hub, underscores the relevance of Bauhaus principles in today’s creative practices.
6. Designing Aspen: The Houses of Rowland + Broughton – The newly released book celebrates the Colorado-based firm’s ability to harmonize contemporary architecture with natural surroundings. Featuring innovative projects from reimagined historic homes to cutting-edge designs, Rowland + Broughton’s work exemplifies sensitivity to place and sustainability, contributing to Aspen’s legacy as a hub for design and architectural innovation.
7. "Immersive Art Is Exploding, and Museums Have a Choice to Make" – This ARTnews article by Felix Barber and András Szántó explored the rise of immersive art experiences and their impact on museums. It resonated deeply following the DAM’s Biophilia exhibition, which blended design, technology, and nature. The article underscores the challenges and opportunities museums face in embracing immersive formats while maintaining their mission to present meaningful, culturally significant art.
8. Khruangbin at Red Rocks and the Saenger Theatre – Seeing Khruangbin perform twice this year—at the iconic Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado and the Saenger Theatre in New Orleans—was a personal highlight. Known for their genre-defying sound and global influences, the band creates an immersive atmosphere that feels both expansive and intimate. As someone who values design and creativity, I’m especially drawn to Khruangbin’s thoughtful aesthetics and seamless integration of sound, visuals, and energy. Their performances reminded me of the power of live music to bridge cultures and emotions, leaving a lasting impression long after the final note.
9. Doors Open Denver: The Denver Architecture Foundation’s 20th Annual Celebration – This year marked the much-anticipated return of Doors Open Denver, the Denver Architecture Foundation’s annual celebration of the city’s built environment, fully in person for the first time in four years. Under the leadership of Meg Touborg, the 2024 event was reimagined and revitalized, featuring walking tours, open sites, and a gala at the Populus hotel that highlighted Denver’s architectural heritage and innovation. A standout addition this year was the inclusion of architectural firms opening their offices to the public, offering a rare behind-the-scenes look at projects currently in development. Doors Open Denver continues to connect communities to the creativity shaping the city’s future, celebrating its past while inspiring its evolution.
10. Celebrating my colleagues’ work at the DAM – I’m incredibly proud of my colleagues’ exhibitions this year. Eric Paddock’s Dawoud Bey: Street Portraits highlighted a transformative phase of the photographer’s career. JR Henneman’s The Life and Art of Tokio Ueyama preserved and celebrated the legacy of this cosmopolitan artist, while Raphael Fonseca’s Sandra Vásquez de la Horra: The Awake Volcanoes marked the US debut of this acclaimed Chilean artist. These exhibitions showcase the museum’s commitment to diverse perspectives and meaningful storytelling.
Johnny Cirillo’s documentation of New York street fashion is a celebration of creativity and personal style.
Jill D’Alessandro, Director and Curator of the Avenir Institute of Textile Arts and Fashion
11. Textiles everywhere – The year of the art world's high fiber diet. This year saw an increase of exhibitions dedicated to contemporary artists working in textiles: Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art, La Biennale di Venezia, and Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction to name a few.
12. The Kennedy Center honored the surviving members of the Grateful Dead – Beacons of the San Francisco sound, this award not only recognizes their contributions but challenges the notion of counterculture. A movement that was born out of the 1960s, their fanbase just continues to grow. The Grateful Dead is as American as apple pie.
13. The @watchingnewyork Instagram account – Johnny Cirillo’s documentation of New York street fashion is a celebration of creativity and personal style.
[The Francis Bacon exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery is] an impressive show that reminds us of the capacity of an artist to do so much with basically one medium: painting.
Raphael Fonseca, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Latin American Art
14. Mike Leigh, Hard Truths – Great actors, great dialogues, lots of things going on all at once. Marianne Jean-Baptiste is impressive.
15. Charli XCX, brat – You may not know what a "brat summer" is, but you most probably heard about it.
16. SZA, Lana – It came almost in the last minute of 2024, but it is here to stay and to warm us up for 2025.
17. Francis Bacon at the National Portrait Gallery – An impressive show that reminds us of the capacity of an artist to do so much with basically one medium: painting.
18. Arturo Kameya @ Prospect.6 – By far my favorite artwork at Prospect.6. Kameya creates a scary ambient that leaves the audience in a very unstable and uncertain place about what they are looking at. I miss the power of doubt that contemporary art can still bring to us.
19. Jasleen Kaur @ Turner Prize – An excellent example of how an installation dealing with appropriations and pop culture can smartly occupy space and invite the audience's body into a very interesting physical experience.
20. Marisol @ Buffalo AKG Art Museum – The first retrospective was dedicated to the artist and organized by the museum, which is now responsible for her estate. If this first group of works, mainly in sculpture and wood, her usual media, is already quite good, I can only imagine what the future years can bring us.
21. Alekos Fassianos Museum – An excellent example of a museum dedicated to a single artist known for his experimentation and extravagantness, but at the same time melancholic paintings and design works — a must-see in Athens.
22. Zurab Tsereteli's Chronicle of Georgia – A monument of this scale and with this national discourse behind it—and quite recent, from 1985—is nothing less than mesmerizing. Its ambition echoes many modernist visual cultures and reminds us that the limits between "contemporary" and "modern" are fluid and cannot follow a supposedly Western linear art history.
23. Closing of the Esquire Theatre – Even though I moved recently to Denver, I will never forget the image of the sign at the Esquire Theatre saying, "Thank you for 97 years." It is a pity and shame that movie theaters like this are closing worldwide.
I’ve always loved Sugimoto’s photography, how he plays with perception and reality, and walking through [Odawara Art Foundation] felt like entering his mind.
Victoria I. Lyall, Frederick and Jan Mayer Curator of Arts of the Ancient Americas
24. Flight into Egypt, The Metropolitan Museum of Art – I love a good mash up that brings the past and the present into conversation. From Henry Turner’s early twentieth-century paintings of the biblical scenes to a Nefertiti disco ball, Flight into Egypt captures the impact of Egyptian culture on African American identity in the twentieth century, specifically in light of the white-washing that archaeologists and historians applied to ancient Egypt. Tight, focused, and deeply grounded in research, no work feels extra. An additional performative component that will take place throughout the run of the show beneath the glittering Nefertiti adds a feeling of now to the show that cannot be replicated.
25. El Dorado: Myths of Gold, Americas Society, New York – Done in two parts, the exhibition looked at the impact of gold throughout the Americas from both an ancient and Indigenous perspective as well as a colonial one. Aime Iglesias Lukin and her team grappled with gold’s legacy as an extractive product. Focused exclusively on this material and Latin American, the exhibition included ancient and contemporary voices that bounced off each other in a powerful contrapunto.
26. Marta Minujín: Arte! Arte! Arte!, Jewish Museum, New York – Argentinian feminist artist Marta Minujín created massive installations throughout her career. A conceptual and performance artist with a psychedelic bent, Minujín’s work is not super well known in the United States. The retrospective at the Jewish Museum included numerous immersive installations whose sole purpose was to elicit joy and allow the visitor to escape or recede into a world of fun. I spent a lovely 10 minutes with an adult mother and daughter dancing within a psychedelic video installation of colored stripes.
27. Hương Ngô: Ungrafting, Fine Arts Center, Colorado Springs – A Los Angeles-based artist, Ngô relied on the idea of grafting plants to create new species to consider the impacts of the reverse process as a metaphor for immigration and assimilation. A video featuring her sister and niece trying to remember the lyrics of a Vietnamese lullaby Ngô’s mother used to sing poignantly captures the forgetting. Curated by Katja Rivera, the design of the show featuring plants and soil alongside the photographs created an unforgettable atmosphere that has stayed with me all year.
28. Xican-a.o.x. Body, Pérez Art Museum – I loved the juxtapositions that I saw throughout the exhibition. Curated by Gilbert Vicario, Cecelia Fajardo Hill, and Marisa del Toro, there were powerful narratives and juxtapositions that stayed with me. Photographer Delilah Montoya’s contemporary casta portraits of Latinx families across the room from rafa esparza’s adobe painting recreating the June 1947 Life magazine cover of a Maya man in profile against an ancient sculpture. Both spoke to the enduring, unresolved questions of where do we come from, who do we think we are, and who do others perceive us to be? Sandy Rodriguez’s sketches of Malinche as an enslaved teenager during the sixteenth-century conquest and Ken Gonzalez-Day’s photographs of lynched brown bodies captured a little-discussed history of enslavement and colonized brown bodies.
29. Jackie Amézquita, Charlie James Gallery – Jackie’s work focuses on our connection to land—the places we are from and the place where we live. Originally from QuetzaltenaNgô, Guatemala, Jackie moved to Los Angeles to go to school. Her earth canvases feature a mixture of soil, cal (dehydrated lime), and masa that she uses to make a soft canvas on which she etches vignettes. Most recently Jackie traveled across the border from west to east and north to south to collect soil from all of the American and Mexican states that edge the boundary. The resulting installation makes clear the absence of difference between north and south. The gradations of color and quality are only evident as you move from west to east. A recent DAM acquisition by Jackie grapples with the legacy of American banana plantations on Central American soil.
30. Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Odawara Art Foundation, Odwara, Japan – On a family trip to Japan, we made a day trip to see Sugimoto’s foundation. Rory Padeken had told me that the foundation was a large land art installation and indeed it is. Positioned on a promontory overlooking the Bay of Japan, Sugimoto and his architects carefully sighted each and every building, sculpture, and installation so that it is aligned with the view as well as the cosmos. Some of the works come alive during the spring solstice while others wait for the vernal or winter equinoxes. I’ve always loved Sugimoto’s photography, how he plays with perception and reality, and walking through these spaces felt like entering his mind.
31. Re-installation of the American collection, Brooklyn Museum of Art – The reinstallation of the American galleries both presents “American” in the broadest terms and employes a very clear and distinct lens through which it examines these materials: a Black, feminist lens. Divided into a series of frameworks derived from colloquial phrases used in Black life, each room presents an unexpected take on the art. My favorite was “Take a seat” in which Colonial portraits are hung low, at the eye level of someone seated on a bench in front. The phrase, which the curators explain, means to bring your ego down, dramatically readjusts the balance of power in one fell swoop. The other gallery, “To Give Flowers,” or to pay compliments, filled me with joy.
32. National Museum of Colombia, Bogota, Colombia – A recent trip to Bogota gave me occasion to visit the National Museum, which has been in the process of reinstalling their permanent collections for nearly a decade. The museum thoughtfully addresses the country’s racial and ecological diversity as well as the history of violent colonization, enslavement, and, more recently, civil war. The design of the galleries and juxtaposition of materials were surprising. The goal of each room is to help visitors connect and engage them to contribute. It was one of the most sophisticated interpretations of history and art I’ve seen in years.
33. Unnamed Figures: Black Presence and Absence in Early American North, American Folk Art Museum, New York – The exhibition re-framed early American colonial history by examining the inclusion and exclusion of Black Americans in scenes of daily life. Tightly organized, the exhibition included a monument to the names and identities of figures that had been recovered during the course of exhibition research. The final section features black and white nineteenth-century photographs taken by Black Americans offering a powerful counterpoint to the rest of the show.
The astonishing and outstanding artistic output of Susan Wick, a longtime Denver-based artist, remains indelible in the heart and mind.
Rory Padeken, Vicki and Kent Logan Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art
34. The Open World, Thailand Biennale (Chiang Rai) – The stellar curatorial team of the 2023 Thailand Biennale centered the work of local artists and creative communities within a regional, national, and international context of global artistic production. The entire experience was thrilling and inspiring to behold.
35. The sudden passing of Vietnamese artist Dinh Q. Lê was a shock to all who knew him and held him dearly in our hearts. Dinh was a generous mentor, kind friend, and guiding light to those, including myself, lucky enough to be captured in his expansive orbit.
36. Edges of Ailey at Whitney Museum of American Art, New York – Original. Thought-provoking. Dynamic. Breathtaking. This exhibition reflects the very best of curatorial rigor and scholarship. A tour de force.
37. Dr. Manulani Aluli Meyer, “Aloha No: Hawaii’s Role in a Worldwide Awakening", Keynote address, Art Summit 2024, Hawaii Contemporary, Honolulu – There is no one else like Auntie Manu, a renowned Native Hawaiian scholar whose research on indigenous knowledge systems are the blueprint for charting a more empathic future for humanity.
38. Susan Wick: Through An Open Frame at David B. Smith Gallery, Denver – The astonishing and outstanding artistic output of Susan Wick, a longtime Denver-based artist, remains indelible in the heart and mind.
39. Abrazar el sol (Embrace the Sun), 2023–2024 by Cristina Flores Péscoran at the 24th Biennale of Sydney – This artwork by the Peruvian and Netherland-based artist Cristina Flores Péscoran was a standout in an exceptional biennial of worldclass art.
40. The Wake: 15th Edition of the Biennale de Dakar – This biennial was exciting and full of energy. Artists from the African continent explored their national and transnational identities, grappled with issues of postcolonialism, and celebrated the vitality of visual cultures and artistic traditions of Africa.
41. Pacita Abad at Walker Art Center, Minneapolis – Pacita Abad finally received her flowers for a lifetime of work focused on her Filipino heritage and transnational identity. Empowering.
42. Arte Povera at Bourse de Commerce, Paris – So many gems and points of connections made across generations of artists experimenting with materials and ideas to constantly question the nature and essence of art. Love, love, love!
43. Carrie Mae Weems: The Shape of Things at Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York – With her singular vision and insightful perspective on the politics of race and its human impact, Carrie Mae Weems is the most important artist working in the United States today. The Shape of Things is an artwork for all times.
