YCGL - December 28, 2022 - Lots to Catch Up On - The Denver Art Museum Visit on Friday, November 25

 Wow, Time goes so quickly when you want to write.  

Things to write about:

Denver Art Museum - November 25

Texas - December 3-10

Getting Ready to Travel December 11-18 and a half

Christmas in Fruita - December 19-26

Yesterday December 27

So, not much there, right?  I'll split them up, but also combine days because, because. 


Just to get started with lots of pictures, The Denver Art Museum.


The Hamilton Building                  The Sie Welcome Center                    The Martin Building

(Thom's Fun Facts about the Denver Art Museum:
  • The Martin Building opened in 1972.  Sally and I went there right after it opened.

  • We took Jaye, Jere and Juhl there soon after we moved back from New Jersey in 1974,  Juhl is a collections manager there now.  He saw it first with us!

  • The Hamilton Building was competed in 2006.  Martin and Martin was the structural engineering firm that did the structural design for the building.  They did the design using a drawing program named AutoDesk Revit which more or less introduced BIM, Building Information Management.  The software was set up so that it went from design to the steel fabricator (Puma Steel in Cheyenne), to be shipped down to Denver just-in-time to be erected by Mortenson Construction.  In the fall of 2005, my ASCE student group toured Martin and Martin, Puma and had the very last tour for the public of Hamilton Building during construction.  The design and fabrication was so accurate that no rivet hole had to be modified during erection.  

  • One of my graduate students was married to a UW Mechanical Engineering graduate who represented the titanium manufacturer who supplied the metal skin for the Hamilton building.)  

Sally and I joined the DAM years ago, 10-15 years? longer?  Seems like a long time because it's a great museum and there are always exhibits that we wanted to see.  The fact that Juhl works there as a collections manager is also a factor.  For some reason, it was tough to switch from Couple to Single Membership, but it was obvious.  I just didn't want to.  But I did when I got there on the Friday after Thanksgiving.  

There were a number of reasons to go this fall.  The original building has undergone an extensive two+ year remodel and it was time to see more of it.  (There's way too much see at one time.)  And there were (are?) two special exhibits I wanted to see.  The Big Show was "Saints, Sinners, Lovers and Fools:300 Years of Flemish Masterpieces".  The second was "Her Brush: Japanese Women Artists from the Fong-Johnstone Collection."  And so much more!  

I had an admission time for Saints, Sinners at 10:20.  I got to the Hamilton Building at 9:45 so I had some time to wander.  The second floor of the Hamilton Building has two primary galleries, one where the Saint and Sinners exhibit was located, the second combined two or three galleries from the Martin building and combined them into "The 19th Century in European and American Art."  As I walked through the gallery door, I saw one of my favorite paintings about 100 feet in front of me.  

I can't tell you what is so special about the painting, whether it's the pastel coloring, the sound that the fife would make, the giggle of the girls, the gentle breeze and the even lighting around them, I don't know, but it is so calming to me that I can feel my blood pressure drop when I see it. Liz says it is a favorite of hers also, and that we used to have a copy of it hanging in the house, but I don't remember it.  But it was like seeing an old (young) friend.

Walking through the gallery, I saw lots of old friends and many new ones.  They have been able to put a lot more art on the wall with the remodels.  (By the way, I found that clicking on the pictures and captions enlarged them, at least for this browser.)




This reminds me of Colorado or Wyoming.


   


This is difficult to post, but it is so striking!  The painting is about 6 feet tall and grabs you as you walk into it.  Art dealing with social justice, like the photographers Lewis Hine or Dorothea Lange


         This looks like the men's club.



Not your typical Monet, but sure invokes the feeling of Norway.




Just a well known piece of Americana, a vision of the world as it could and couldn't be.


And of course, you have to have a Van Gogh.  This was painted before the three pictures at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and, while the brush strokes are bold, they are not thick

Then I entered the main exhibit Saints, Sinners, Lovers and Fools.  Here is the Access Guide by the Denver Art Museum.  I guess I could have just linked this in and not worried about my pictures.  But I'm doing it anyway.



First, this is a large exhibition.  There are over 120 pieces of art plus manuscripts, printing, sculptures and other examples of works done in the region and at the period of time.  I'm showing only a small smattering of the works, but I spent two hours in the exhibit and didn't read everything there.  Close, but no cigar.  Luckily, I saw they had folding chairs by the front door, and I picked one up after about 15 minutes in.  It allowed me to take things a little slower.  So, here goes.  The first work you see is:



It has quite an impact.  It is about 5 feet tall and 8 feet wide.  The picture doesn't do justice to the detail and clarity of the still life, and the dogs on the left maybe don't want to be too still.  


The exhibit was divided by themes, not chronology, The sections were:

  • God is in the Detail  (Clicking on the Red Headings takes you to the museum's webpage)
    And right around the corner from the first painting is:


  • This is what we would typically expect from Bosch, the sins of gossip, glutteny, gambling, evils of the flesh sliding into the pits of hell.  But, music historian that I am, I liked the musical instruments in the middle.  These are not sacred or refined instruments, like the organ in a church, but instruments that you might see in a pub or bawdy house, like a hurdy-gurdy, a drum, a trumpet or a shawm.  Iconography like this is very important to learn about instruments that were not described in contemporary literature or manuscripts.  We can see the relative dimensions of the instruments, the number of strings, the number of keys, the spacing of the fingerholes, etc.  Both the Lute Society and the Lute Society of America have galleries of paintings and prints




    and pictures of manuscripts with lutes, theorboes, renaissance and baroque guitars, and other strung instruments of the time.  

  • From God to the Individual
  • Fool in the Mirror
  • The Discovery of the World
    There was a lot of neat things in this section.  This was the age of the printing press, and one whole wall was filled with printed pages of emerging science and technology.  (Not that I was that interested, of course...)

    And then, one of the show-stoppers, 

    Peter Paul Rubens and Studio
    South Netherlandish, 1577–1640
    Diana Hunting with Her Nymphs
    About 1636–37
    Oil paint on canvas
    The Phoebus Foundation, Antwerp
    Image © The Phoebus Foundation, Antwerp

    To see a picture of this painting is to lose the impact of it.  It is about 7 feet tall and 18 feet long.  
    This doesn't quite give the scale either, because the person is standing about half-way between me and the painting.  

  • A World in Turmoil
    This section dealt with the world in conflict.  Much had to do with the Protestant Revolution against the Catholic world.  But some of it had to do with the just the changing order of life.  


  • The Pursuit of Wonder
  • Display Cabinets of Objects
But I think my favorite of all the art was a "simple" portrait almost as you left the gallery.  It was on a side wall leading to a hallway and by itself.  And it was by an unknown artist.  The detail was exquisite.  I think I spent the most time here looking at this portrait.  








You never know what is going to capture you.  I was interested in the last exhibit when I read about it, but didn't know I would be so taken by it.  And I kind of had to rush through it, I had to get home to get packing for the trip down to Cozumel of all things.  You never know....


Her Brush

Japanese Women Artists from the Fong-Johnstone Collection

You never know what is going to capture you. Yes, I had seen calligraphic art from Japan, some, not a lot.  Saw the occasional hangings in some museums.  I knew it was meant to be contemplative, Buddhist in background.  But I had never delved into it.  Interesting.  

This was different.  There were several layers of content here.  The exhibit consisted of over 100 items from over 500 given by two men, Dr. John Fong and Dr. Colin Johnstone.  They have never been on exhibit before.  What the curator and a number of consultants wanted to do was tie the art works with biographies of the women.  

This art was a man's world, and women were not invited in.  The women had to overcome many hardships to learn their craft, their art.  For most, it required to them to become Buddhist monks.  To give up the world to study and to practice creating these works of art.  

Rather than me showing you a few examples and trying to convey what I had read, let the Museum do it for me.  It is much better than I could write.  

First, click on the the title above.  It gives a quick overview of what is to come.  Then look at the Preamble/Introduction.  This gives you an idea of the intensity and drive and scope of these women.  And then, if you don't read anything else, read Taking the Tonsure.   

Finally, the last three items describe the actual collection and what the museum plans to do with it.  The second is an article written by a leader in in the study of Japanese Women artists, provides background to the field.  Lastly are all the items on display.  Unfortunately, it is lacking the information given on the walls.  

Table of Contents

This exhibit was a gift to me.  It has given me an appreciation of an art form that I didn't take time in the past to understand, or maybe just begin to understand.  The DAM is going to make a permanent exhibit of this collection.  In the future, I will look forward to visiting it again and again.  





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