subject: Visiting The Denver Art Museum [print this page] The Denver Art Museum's African gallery is the most comprehensive body of objects from the African continent in the Rocky Mountain region. It includes about 1,000 paintings, sculptures, installations, and mixed media compositions from every part of Africa.
In the African gallery, artworks are presented in the context of music, poetry, and performance. Older works in the gallery are juxtaposed with new works by contemporary African artists.
The American Indian art display includes more than 18,000 art objects representing the heritage of all cultures and tribes across the United States and Canada. The display spans more than 2,000 years of artistic creativity, from prehistoric times to the present.
The collection includes diverse artistic traditions such as Pueblo ceramics, Navajo textiles, Northwest Coast sculpture, basketry, Plains beadwork, and oil paintings, representing the full range of American Indian art styles. The diverse architecture, design, and graphics collection encompasses a broad range of design practices, including architecture, decorative design, graphic design, industrial design, and functional craft.
The museum is also the steward of the AIGA Design Archives. This is a major acquisition representing the most comprehensive holding of American graphic design from 1980 to the present in the world.
The Asian gallery originated in 1915 with a pledge of Chinese and Japanese objects and has broadened to include works from the entire Asian continent. Spanning a period from the fourth millennium B.C. to the present, these objects illustrate the wide-ranging achievements of Asian artists and artisans.
The Asian galleries are devoted to the arts of China, India, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia, Southwest Asia, Tibet, and Nepal. Two changing galleries, the William Sharpless Jackson Jr. Gallery and the Sze Hong Gallery, feature exhibitions drawn from the museum's holdings and other Asian art displays.
The European and American gallery, which includes more than 3,000 artworks, is composed of painting, sculpture, and prints. The European gallery is rich in Renaissance and 19th-century French paintings and includes the Berger Collection of British paintings, on loan to the museum.
The American gallery's paintings, sculpture, prints, and drawings represent all major periods in American art before 1945. The European and American galleries include a Discovery Library with books, interactive games, costumes, and other hands-on activities.
The modern and contemporary collection contains more than 4,500 works in a wide variety of media, with an emphasis on both internationally known and emerging artists. The collection includes photography, from 19th-century landscapes to the work of contemporary photographers.
The Herbert Bayer Collection and Archive, contains about 8,000 works of art and extensive documentary materials, is an internationally significant repository highlighting this Bauhaus master. Selections from this important resource will be displayed on the lower level of the Hamilton Building.
The Oceanic display includes an array of art forms from the South Pacific region and is especially strong in art from Melanesia and Polynesia. This display of more than 1,000 pieces includes important historic monumental sculpture, delicate bark cloth, intricate wood carvings, and the work of contemporary artists such as Mathias Kauage and Laben Sakale.
The pre-Columbian collection represents nearly every major culture in Mesoamerica, Central America, and South America, with particular strengths in the arts of Central America and Peruvian, Ecuadorian, and Mayan ceramics. Thousands of pre-Columbian objects are displayed on the North Building's fourth floor, which has reading areas and activities for kids and adults.
The museum's display of Spanish Colonial paintings, silver, santos, and other art objects represents much of Latin America. This includes Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Mexico, and the southwestern United States.
The textile collection ranges from Coptic and pre-Columbian textiles to contemporary works of art in fiber. An extensive collection of American quilts and coverlets, the Julia Wolf Glasser display of samplers, and the Charlotte Hill Grant display of Chinese court costumes and accessories are among the strengths of the gallery.
The Western American gallery includes work by western masters such as George Catlin, Frederic Remington, Charles M. Russell, John Mix Stanley, Alfred Jacob Miller, and others. The crown jewel in the institute's galley is Charles Deas's Long Jakes, "the Rocky Mountain Man," the single most influential image in Rocky Mountain iconography.
