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.
Untitled Creative Fusions
Roll up your sleeves and dress to impress for a stylish Untitled dedicated to costume and fashion. From business suits to birthday suits, we’re celebrating the looks needed to ball, brawl, and stand tall. Start planning your outfits now, and get dressed to the nines for Untitled: Power Suit at the Denver Art Museum!
Go Behind the "Seams"
Suit up with Native Arts Artist-in-Residence, Wendy Red Star in a behind-the-"seams" look at tailoring techniques and one-of-a-kind looks fashioned from Pendleton blankets.
Untitled Creative Fusions
Note: The following Untitled Final Friday activities are included with general admission. To see Star Wars™ and the Power of Costume while at Untitled, you will need to purchase a special exhibition ticket (which also will give you access to Untitled.)
Untitled: Empire
Untitled Creative Fusions
It’s the last Untitled Final Friday of 2016 (Untitled is on hiatus November and December) and we’re celebrating by rolling back the clock to the gold, glamour, and Glory of Venice. Come on by, but better move fast, because Glory Days…well, they’ll pass you by.
Untitled Creative Fusions
Untitled: Stop Motion is the last of our dance-themed Untitled Final Fridays, exploring dance, photography, and artworks that express time. Join us for hands-on activities, dancing, performances, and artist talks.
Explore where stop-motion animation began. Create your own animated flip-book masterpiece, or you can twirl into action with zoetropes and thaumatropes that bring the action to life.
Untitled Creative Fusions
It’s dance season at the Denver Art Museum and it’s time to take Center Stage at Untitled Final Friday.
All the world’s a stage, but this one’s full of ballerinas, drag queens, and never-before-seen sky-high chair soldiers! What?! Stick around, kid; it’s going to be one heck of a show.
Untitled Creative Fusions
It’s time to get steppin’ for Untitled In-Sync, the first of three movin,’ groovin’ Untitled Final Fridays celebrating dance at the Denver Art Museum. For July, we’re gathering our crews for a night of synchronized moves and creative collaborations, as we look at partners, pair-ups, and performances that really, you know…move us!
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.
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.
Conservation treatment of King Caspar is almost finished. Having completed the structural portion of the treatment which included filling cracks, repairing broken elements, and stabilizing loose joints, I moved on to the aesthetic portion of the treatment. The goal of this part of the treatment was to unify the overall appearance by filling areas where the paint and/or gesso was lost to bring them to the same level as the surrounding surfaces.
My initial examination revealed that the sculpture of King Caspar was in poor condition. Many of the wooden joints were loose; some pieces were broken and missing. The paint and barniz chinesco surfaces were actively flaking and the sculpture was very grimy. In collaboration with curator Donna Pierce, I designed a treatment plan that will restore the structural stability of the sculpture so that it can be handled, studied, and displayed safely. We also decided to pursue aesthetic compensation so that it can be effectively understood as a devotional object.