Note: Karen Gilkey’s job at the Denver Art Museum is to ensure events run smoothly. Here, she shares her experience in working with former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright when she was at the DAM on April 14 for a member event for the opening of Read My Pins: The Madeleine Albright Collection. The exhibition is open through June 17.
Event Details
Florence Müller had the enviable job of curating the exhibition Yves Saint Laurent: The Retrospective, on view through July 8 at the Denver Art Museum. She was able to sort through the entire archive of Saint Laurent’s designs and selected more than 200 outfits for the retrospective. Florence is a fashion historian, former director-curator of the Union Française des arts du Costume, curator of a number of exhibitions in France and abroad, and associate professor at the Institut Français de la Mode (IFM).
My story is about the discovery and subsequent process of reaching consensus on the attribution of an unpublished early work by the Italian veduto (vista or views) painter Giovanni Antonio Canal, called il Canaletto I 1697 – 1768 at the Denver Art Museum. Yes, even unknown works by old master artists can be found even in museum storage areas.
I chanced upon this painting one day in 2007 while looking at works with other staff members from the Department of Painting and Sculpture in storage.
I was happy to hear from Timothy Standring, the curator of European painting and sculpture, that the Denver Art Museum was awarded the TEFAF grant to treat a long lost Canaletto picture, Venice: the Molo from the Bacino di San Marco. Though eager to look at the picture myself, I was also a little apprehensive to learn of its condition because pictures of this age are often heavily restored or "touched up," which may have been the reason it was overlooked in the first place.
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First Look
Yves Saint Laurent: The Retrospective successfully opened at the Denver Art Museum on March 25. However, behind-the-scenes installation activities for this exciting exhibition began weeks before. An installation team consisting of Fondation Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent personnel with contracted specialists arrived from Paris on March 7th to begin installation on March 8th. The DAM provided its own installation team including registrars, collection managers, installation specialists, preparators, and conservators.
Families took full advantage of the many programs offered at Denver Art Museum for Best Spring Break Ever: Design Days on March 24-April 1.
Photos from our spring break programs such as the YSL Paper Doll Challenge: Interactive Family Tour are on view on the DAM's flickr page.
Join in more artmaking fun in the galleries on your next visit when you make an Egyptian inspired flower collar at our Flower Collar Hotspot or create your own tapa cloth at the Play with Pattern Hotspot.
Thanks to all the museum visitors who made Best Spring Break Ever so exciting this year.
The Denver Art Museum has teamed up with Google Art Project and 150 other museums around the globe to share some of our favorite works with you.
"The Art Project is part of our efforts to bringing culture online and making it accessible the widest possible audience," said Amit Sood, head of Google Art Project, in an April 3 blog posting.
The next time you board an airplane, take a minute to consider some of the interesting things that may be flying along with you as cargo. Down in the belly of the plane with your suitcase and skis are all sorts of other packages. From mail to pets to computer parts, cargo comes in all shapes and sizes. Among all those crazy packages occasionally lurks artwork traveling from one museum to another.
Here are some of our favorite items currently on the shelves in the Museum Shop.
When you think of the Denver Art Museum, ticketing probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. For some of us, however, it’s our bread and butter. So for people like me, who deal with ticketing issues day in and day out, when someone calls you and tells you that the millionth transaction is about to happen you get a little excited.
One of the “cool” parts of my job is the occasional interaction with a living artist. A few weeks ago Ed Ruscha, one of the top living American artists, visited the museum. He was in town for the opening of his exhibition Ed Ruscha: On the Road , on view at the Denver Art Museum (DAM) through April 8.
The fashion frenzy continues at the museum March 30 during Untitled #45 (Haute). We partnered with Fallene Wells and her production company Forever Darling to host a runway show with eight designers from the TV hit Project Runway. Each designer created a collection inspired by the legendary fashion icon Yves Saint Laurent and the museum’s recently opened exhibition that celebrates his entire creative output, Yves Saint Laurent: The Retrospective. What’s really cool for Colorado is two of the designers call this state home.
