Located across the street from the west side of the Denver Art Museum, next to the venerable Camera Obscura, is the city’s coziest little art shop, the Emil Nelson Gallery (1307 Bannock Street, 303-534-0996). Into the warren of small rooms that once made up the first floor of an old…
There’s an important exhibit at the Denver Art Museum that’s being given the royal treatment, which makes sense, because it’s filled with regal pieces. The blockbuster is Painting a New World: Mexican Art and Life, 1521-1821, a mammoth endeavor that includes more than fifty paintings, many of them monumental in…
California-based photographer Rick Nahmias was researching famed TV journalist Edward R. Murrow when he came upon Harvest of Shame, Murrow’s 1960s documentary about the dreadful living conditions of farm workers. The film inspired Nahmias to revisit the topic, and the results are the dozens of wonderful photos that make up…
I was really worried about contemporary art at the end of the twentieth century. Things were looking bleak, as public support was clearly on the wane. The art magazines and the art establishment were no help, either, since both were filled with the novel, the outlandish and the absurd, but,…
The Colorado Photographic Arts Center (1513 Boulder Street, 303-455-8999) is presenting a theme show with the scientific-sounding title of TRANSMUTATIONS, referring to something that has been changed or altered into something else. In this case, the three artists represented at CPAC — Marilyn Waligore, Lisa Folino and Marc Berghaus –…
Not since the 1960s has there been so much aesthetic interest in popular culture. It all began a decade ago, when many contemporary artists grew tired of formalism and expressionism and began picking up on the pop-related styles of a previous generation. Some of these new-pop artists revived the original…
The spacious if grungy Andenken Gallery (2110 Market Street, 303-292-3281) near Coors Field is the perfect setting for the fourth annual Kinetic and Robot Show, which highlights art about actual and implied movement. Put together by Andenken director Hyland Mather, the exhibit is quite strange, mostly because the selections don’t…
Half a century ago, women artists were viewed as second-rate, at best. Then, around 35 years ago, women challenged that old chestnut. In the intervening decades, numerous important female artists have emerged, and works from previous generations have been upwardly reappraised. This Cinderella story is the political narrative and organizational…
Susan Goldstein is one of the best experimental fine-art photographers in the region, and POLI VESTURE: Photographic Images From a Catholic Statue Factory, her current solo at Edge Gallery (3658 Navajo Street, 303-477-7173), proves it. The fairly large exhibit is handsomely installed in the front gallery. Poli Vesture was a…
Putting together a coherent art show is difficult, and so many of the shows I see — even some of the good ones — don’t exactly make sense. Imagine, then, how rare it is to find not one, but three shows that all make sense. And not only that, but…
The Sandy Carson Gallery (760 Santa Fe Drive, 303-573-8585) is the flagship art venue of the Santa Fe arts district, which makes it one of the top spots in town. High-quality exhibitions are the reason why — and the current offering, 3 Search and Converge in the Creative, is just…
Bill Havu, director of his namesake William Havu Gallery, has taken an interesting observation and turned it into an excellent show. After noticing that many mid-career artists across the country were creating paintings inspired by abstract expressionism, Havu came up with Wet Paint, a marvelous group effort that examines the…
Dorothea Dunlop was a notable Denver-born sculptor whose long career spanned the past forty years. She died on February 19 at age ninety, of complications from a stroke. Reflecting the mores of the era in which she lived, Dunlop had been a full-time wife and mother before she turned to…
Rule Gallery director Robin Rule has a taste for art with a less-is-more aesthetic, and she has made her place on Broadway Denver’s “minimalist central.” Over the years, she’s showcased first-generation minimalists from New York, including Carl Andre and Mary Obering, as well as local practitioners, notably Clark Richert, the…
The many spaces on the ground floor at Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art (1275 19th Street, 303-298-7554) are dedicated to an expansive survey of contemporary Chinese photography. But on the mezzanine is a quiet solo, Hidden Images, dedicated to recent compositions by a major contemporary Czech artist, Adéla Matasová. The…
It’s amazing how readily recognizable the imagery associated with the American West is, especially considering how quickly the whole cowboy-and-Indian thing came and went. In less than a century, the Western states were transformed from a huge, unknown frontier into a settled region linked by railroads and lit by electric…
The unusual group offering in the main gallery at Pirate: A Contemporary Art Oasis (3659 Navajo Street, 303-458-6058) includes pieces by artists from around the world. Mapas y Espejos (Maps and Mirrors) showcases the Matrix Art Project, a loose collective that mounts presentations such as this one throughout the United…
These days, it’s hard to mention the University of Colorado at Boulder and keep a straight face. I’m referring, of course, to the involuntary smirks, cringes and eye-rolling that are among the most common responses to hearing all the juicy dirt about the athletic department’s controversial recruiting practices. (With the…
The current show at Denver’s modest but highly regarded Artyard Sculpture Gallery (1251 South Pearl Street, 303-777-3219) features the latest body of work by Carley Warren, a famous name in local sculpture circles. The exhibit, Burdens, highlights the artist’s signature style with a group of her familiar wooden sculptures, which…
It would be an understatement to say that there’s a lot of excitement surrounding the marvelous idea of constructing a new building to house Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art. And even if the MCA hasn’t yet mounted a campaign to raise the $3 million to $4 million needed, the process…
Shots of mountains, cowboys and horses, and other subjects evocative of the American West make up most of Photographs by Barbara Van Cleve, the solo at the Camera Obscura Gallery (1309 Bannock Street, 303-623-4059). Born in Montana and living today in New Mexico, Van Cleve is a true Westerner, but…
Using politics to create art requires a skill for balancing aesthetics with philosophy, since political artwork must be visually successful while also conveying a message. The problem is that most artists can’t pull it off — something that’s very apparent in the art world, where bad message art is so…
