The Petrie Institute of Western American Art

JR (Jennifer R.) Henneman, Director and Curator of the Petrie Institute of Western American Art

JR (Jennifer R.) Henneman received her doctoral degree in 19th century British and American art and visual culture at the University of Washington in 2016. Upon her arrival at the Denver Art Museum, Jennifer co-curated Backstory: Western American Art in Context in collaboration with History Colorado. More recently, she published an essay on Annie Oakley in Britain in The Popular Frontier (ed. Frank Christianson, 2017), co-curated and contributed to the catalog for Natural Forces: Winslow Homer and Frederic Remington (2020), and edited and contributed to The American West in Art: Selections from the Denver Art Museum (2020).

Meg Selig, Curatorial Assistant

Meg Selig is the Curatorial Assistant for the Petrie Institute of Western American Art. She has a master’s degree in art history, and has been working at the museum since 2015. She has worked on several exhibitions for the museum, including A Place in the Sun: The Southwest Paintings of Walter Ufer & E. Martin Hennings, The Western: An Epic in Art and Film, The Light Show, and Natural Forces: Winslow Homer and Frederic Remington.

Lauren Thompson, Interpretive Specialist

Lauren Thompson is Interpretive Specialist for European and American Art Before 1900 and for the Petrie Institute of Western American Art at the Denver Art Museum, where she has been interpretation lead on Glory of Venice: Masterworks of the Renaissance, Degas: A Passion for Perfection, and Natural Forces: Winslow Homer and Frederic Remington, among other exhibitions. Prior to coming to the DAM, she served as director of programs at the Ann Arbor Art Center, and worked at Museum of Fine Arts, Houston where she was named Museum Educator of the Year in 2011 by the Texas Art Education Association. Lauren received her bachelor's in art history and communication from Trinity University and her master's in art history from the University of Denver.

The Denver Art Museum has collected and exhibited Western American art for more than sixty years. In the 1950s, led by Royal Hassrick, the museum’s first curator of Western art—and with grants from the Boettcher Foundation, the Frederick G. Bonfils Foundation, the Fred E. Gates Fund, and the Lawrence Phipps Foundation—the museum purchased a group of exceptional works by early artists in the American West including William Jacob Hays and Alfred Jacob Miller. Important acquisitions and gifts continued through the years, with the addition of significant work by Thomas Moran, Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Remington, Charles Marion Russell, and Charles Deas.

In 2001, the museum received a transformative gift of western American art from William Sr. and Dorothy Harmsen that substantially broadened the museum’s holdings. Joan Carpenter Troccoli, PhD, previously director of Gilcrease Museum, joined by associate curator Ann Daley, established an Institute of Western American Art and initiated the annual publication of the scholarly journal Western Passages. After an extraordinary lead gift from Tom and Jane Petrie to partially endow the department in 2007, the institute was renamed the Petrie Institute of Western American Art, and by 2010, the Petrie Institute was fully endowed with donations from dozens of contributors. With this endowment, the institute is able to continue sponsoring symposia, speakers, and publications that further our knowledge of Western American art.

In 2005, longtime museum director Peter H. Hassrick (son of Royal Hassrick) came out of retirement to "finish some family business" by becoming curator and director of the institute. He introduced an annual symposium that remains a signature program for the institute. In 2009, Thomas Brent Smith became the director and curator of the Petrie Institute of Western American Art. Under his leadership, the department has embarked on an ambitious program of exhibitions and publications. In 2016, Jennifer R. Henneman, PhD, joined the curatorial team and began organizing exhibitions and expanding the collection through acquisition of works by women and artists of color.

Denver collector Henry Roath made a game-changing gift when he donated more than 50 western paintings and sculptures in 2013. Strong in work by the Taos Society of Artists, the Roath Collection includes paintings that are among those artists’ best. In 2014, the museum further expanded its holdings by acquiring, through gift and purchase, the collection of Dr. George C. and Catherine M. Peck, which further strengthened the museum’s holdings in Southwestern paintings. Another significant strength of the collection is due to the efforts of the Contemporary Realists group (now DAM Westerners), founded by James Wallace, which over the past twenty-five years has added more than sixty artworks to the collection by artists from our region who choose to work in a representational mode. Additionally, the department has compiled an unparalleled collection of bronzes, including what many consider to be Frederic Remington’s single greatest cast, The Cheyenne, the iconic End of the Trail by James Earl Fraser, and a group of works by nationally renowned Denver artist Alexander Phimister Proctor.

Always working diligently to expand the collection in compelling and exciting ways, the department hopes to further its reach by including works by artists of the Pacific Northwest and California, as well as collecting additional works by women and under-represented artists, which will celebrate the intrinsic diversity of the American West and tell a richer and more complete story of the region’s artistic legacy.

Since its inception, PIWAA has actively published significant contributions to the field of western American art, including award-winning exhibition catalogs. Western Passages, its signature scholarly series, includes essays on the art of the American West by curators and historians. A collection catalog, The American West in Art, provides an updated account of our growing collection with wide-ranging essays by Thomas Brent Smith, Jennifer R. Henneman, and Molly Medakovich.

Publications:

• West Point Points West, Vol. 1 of Western Passages (Denver Art Museum, 2002)
• Sweet on the West: How Candy Built a Colorado Treasure, Vol. 2 of Western Passages (Denver Art Museum, 2003)
• Redrawing Boundaries: Perspectives on Western American Art, Vol. 3 of Western Passages (Denver Art Museum, 2007)
• Heart of the West: New Painting and Sculpture of the American West, Vol. 4 of Western Passages (Denver Art Museum, 2007)
• Colorado: The Artist’s Muse, Vol. 5 of Western Passages (Denver Art Museum, 2008)
• Peter H. Hassrick and Elizabeth J. Cunningham, In Contemporary Rhythm: The Art of Ernest L. Blumenschein (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008)
• Carol Clark, Charles Deas and 1840s America, Vol. 4 of The Charles M. Russell Center Series on Art and Photography of the American West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009)

• Joan Carpenter Troccoli, ed., The Masterworks of Charles M. Russell: A Retrospective of Paintings and Sculpture, Vol. 6 of The Charles M. Russell Center Series on Art and Photography of the American West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009)
• Charlie Russell and Friends, Vol. 6 of Western Passages (Denver Art Museum, 2010)
• Shaping the West: American Sculptors of the 19th Century, Vol. 7 of Western Passages (Denver Art Museum, 2010)
• Thomas Brent Smith, ed., Elevating Western American Art: Developing an Institute in the Cultural Capital of the Rockies, Vol. 8 of Western Passages (Denver Art Museum, 2012)
• Thomas Brent Smith, ed., Rocky Mountain Majesty: The Paintings of Charles Partridge Adams (Denver Art Museum, 2013)
• Decades: An Expanded Context for Western American Art, 1900–1940. Vol. 9 of Western Passages (Denver Art Museum, 2014)
• Thomas Brent Smith and Thayer Tolles, eds., The American West in Bronze, 1850–1925 (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2013)
• Thomas Brent Smith, ed., A Place in the Sun: The Southwest Paintings of Walter Ufer and E. Martin Hennings (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016)
• Mary-Dailey Desmarais and Thomas Brent Smith, eds., Once Upon a Time . . . The Western: A New Frontier in Art and Film (Denver: Denver Art Museum; Milan: Five Continents Editions, 2017)
• Maggie Adler, Diana Greenwold, Jennifer R. Henneman, and Thomas Brent Smith, Homer Remington (Fort Worth: Amon Carter Museum of American Art; Denver: Denver Art Museum; Portland: Portland Museum of Art, Maine, 2020)
• Thomas Brent Smith and Jennifer R. Henneman, eds. The American West in Art: Selections from the Denver Art Museum, Vol. 10 of Western Passages (Denver: Denver Art Museum; Milan: Five Continents Editions, 2020)