As part of the research for the conservation treatment of the painting The Virgin of Valvanera, attributed to Cristóbal de Villalpando, a team from the Denver Art Museum traveled to Mexico City in March, 2017. There, the team was fortunate to visit several sites and meet with specialists on Mexican painting of the baroque period.
Art conservation is a field that encompasses a breadth of expertise. As we roll up our sleeves in anticipation of improvements and potential discoveries, a plan that will provide optimum preservation is essential.
Entering its seventh year, the Bank of America Art Conservation Project has funded more than 100 projects in 29 countries, on six continents. In 2016, the Denver Art Museum was among 21 institutions to receive one of these prestigious grants. As a result of this generous support, the conservation and New World curatorial departments will be able to undertake the full scope of historical and technical research as well as the conservation treatment of a very important painting from the museum's Spanish Colonial collection.
The Denver Art Museum is honored to announce that Anna and John J. Sie have pledged $12 million to support the North Building revitalization project.
For more than two decades, J. Landis (Lanny) and Sharon have been instrumental in guiding the vision of the Denver Art Museum and have provided a longstanding commitment to major programs, special exhibitions, and important acquisitions to the permanent collection.
With their transformational $25 million gift, the largest financial gift in the museum’s history, to revitalize the North Building, they have elevated this institution to new heights.
The Denver Art Museum today announced bold plans to make significant improvements to the iconic North Building.
In 1971, the North Building opened, allowing the museum to display its collections under one roof for the first time. Superstar Italian architect Gio Ponti designed the exterior while Denver-based James Sudler Associates designed the gallery spaces and interior. It was a radical decision to build a seven-story, 210,000-square-foot tower—one of the first high-rise museums built in the country—in Denver.
Leonardo Drew recently gave a talk at the Denver Art Museum as part of the Logan Lecture Series. Known for creating large-scale sculptures and multi-media works on paper that explore his interest in the cyclical nature of creation, decay, and regeneration, Drew has created a unique style and technique. Drew employs a process that is physically and conceptually steeped in memory, history, and the passage of time.
Over the past 20 years, Vancouver, BC, photographer Danny Singer has explored the American and Canadian prairie from Alberta and Saskatchewan south to the plains of Texas, photographing the kinds of towns most travelers overlook in their rush to get from one place to the next.
You may have recently seen Scottish Angus Cow and Calf—the larger-than-life bronze sculptures by artist Dan Ostermiller—getting their annual summer bath. Above and beyond their cleaning with a specialized mild detergent, the Cow and Calf sculptures needed other treatments, including re-patination and waxing, due to the constant physical interaction they receive from the public.
Minnesota photographer Alec Soth’s pictures bring to light the quirkiness and humanity of people he encounters and the places where they live. From 2012–2014, Soth embarked on a series of state-by-state road trips to make a portrait of present-day America. His journey through each state that he visited was printed in a “dispatch” format that calls to mind a small town newspaper or travel guide.
The highly realistic sculpture Linda by Colorado artist John DeAndrea has been a visitor favorite at the Denver Art Museum since it became a part of the collection in 1984. Linda is also an important work of contemporary art in which DeAndrea made innovative use of a material that was fairly new to art at the time: plastic. This is why Linda is of such interest to us in the museum’s conservation department. This is a material that has not yet stood the test of time, and we watch Linda carefully to understand how the plastic is aging.
In preparation for Creative Crossroads: The Art of Tapestry (now closed), the museum’s staff have been working on a Spanish Colonial table cover in PreVIEW (a behind-the-scenes visible staging area in our textile art gallery).
Curators have examined it and explored its history, and textile art conservators have been testing and repairing the tapestry. Follow this series of blogs to track their progress.