It is no exaggeration to say that Denver’s entire art landscape changed for the better last week when Ron Judish Fine Arts cut the ribbon on its new and unbelievably grand gallery in Highland. The gallery had been located on Wazee Street in LoDo before shutting down in the middle…
The Spark Gallery (1535 Platte Street, 303-455-4435) typically hosts two shows at once, which is the ordinary practice for most co-ops. Unfortunately, more often than not, the shows are incompatible. I suppose this is the inevitable result of the vagaries of scheduling and the very heterogeneous membership at Spark. This…
The Human Factor: Figuration in American Art, 1950-1995, now showing at the Center for the Visual Arts, is every bit as compelling as the Denver Art Museum’s current Alice Neel exhibit. In fact, not only do both shows explore late twentieth-century representational art, but Neel even makes an appearance at…
Lisa Spivak has put together a show that’s so good you’ll think you’re at the Denver Art Museum’s Close Range Gallery rather than the Rocky Mountain College of Art & Design’s Phillip J. Steele Gallery (6875 East Evans Avenue). An economical survey of the region’s dean of modern sculpture, Robert…
The current state of affairs in the world, involving the destruction of the World Trade Center, the war in Afghanistan and the use of bio-agents as weapons, has incidentally made some art exhibits edgier and more difficult than had originally been intended by their organizers. Especially problematic are shows with…
Looking Forward, Looking Black, in the Victoria H. Myhren Gallery at the University of Denver (2121 East Asbury Avenue, 303-871-2846), is a tremendously impressive traveling show that explores the perception of African-Americans in art. Most of the artists are African-American, and many deal specifically with racial identity. That’s certainly true…
In the past, administrators at the Denver Art Museum have had a bad habit regarding the scheduling of temporary exhibitions. They’ve lined them up one at a time and then shuttered the rooms — usually the first-floor Stanton and Hamilton galleries — in the downtime between shows. Sometimes this state…
Fresh Art Gallery director Jeanie King is talking about expanding. “I’m looking at two places right now, but I’m not sure I’m going to take either one,” she says. “I’ll decide by the end of the month, with the idea of being open in the spring.” For the foreseeable future,…
Capturing the human form has a very long tradition in the visual arts, going back over 12,000 years. And despite the rise of abstraction and its progeny a century ago, artists are still drawn to the figure as a subject redolent with possibilities. Here in Denver, a number of galleries…
Every once in a while, a show at one of the city’s alternative spaces is as good as — or better than — any exhibit in a prestigious gallery or museum. Chain Reaction: new works by Gail Wagner, at the Edge Gallery through Sunday, October 6, is just such a…
Like that of the academic world, national television and professional football, the art world’s season starts in the fall. Although a few pre-season openers were unveiled in Denver over Labor Day weekend, most of the 2001-2002 entries were set to open a week or two later. I don’t need to…
About thirty years ago, serious fine-art photographers began taking scenic shots that incorporated not only the magnificent landscape — the focus of their predecessors — but also glimpses of development’s litter. By now these poignant dichotomies, once so groundbreaking, are a standard of contemporary landscape photography, particularly here in the…
The modern and contemporary department at the Denver Art Museum has essentially been on a forced retreat for the last year or so. Pushed out of the spacious Stanton rooms on the first floor in order to make room for various traveling blockbusters, the department has had to deal with…
Lisa Spivak, director of the Phillip J. Steele Gallery (6875 East Evans Avenue, 303-753-6046), has long made an art form out of getting the most from the least. You see, until a month or so ago, the Steele was little more than a corner of the lobby in the design…
When I first got word of Soon Come: The Art of Contemporary Jamaica, a traveling group show now at Metro State’s Center for the Visual Arts in LoDo, I thought to myself: “Soon Come? Ho hum.” Rum’s what I think of when I think of Jamaica, not credible contemporary art…
There are four interesting shows going on right now at Edge Gallery, 3658 Navajo Street, 303-477-7173, and each is utterly distinct from the others. In the front space is I am not the same person that I was before, featuring a group of recent abstract paintings by Edgester Mark Brasuell…
After moving three times in only two years, Hyland Mather and Malia Tata appear to have finally found a promising spot for their Andenken Gallery and Design, which combines fine-art sales with a graphics studio. Andenken originally opened in the Raven’s Nest studio complex. But despite a spectacular gallery space…
Preservationists statewide took an interest this past summer in the old Cragmor Sanitorium (seen above in its original condition) in Colorado Springs. And who could blame them? Originally built as a luxurious treatment facility for those who suffered from tuberculosis, the 1914 Spanish Colonial-style building is an important landmark. Designed…
With a few cool evenings in the last couple of weeks, there’s no denying that fall’s on the way. And what better season to check out a couple of shows devoted to that coziest of all art forms — the quilt. The Colorado History Museum is presenting Quiltspeak: Stories in…
With blockbusters sweeping in and out of the main-floor galleries at the Denver Art Museum (100 West 14th Avenue Parkway, 720-865-5000), it’s easy to forget that there are many fine smaller shows upstairs (see review, previous page). A compelling example can be found on the fifth floor, which is devoted…
Last fall, a national search was conducted to find a replacement for Cydney Payton, the respected former director of the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art who has taken over at Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art. In January, BMoCA’s board of trustees announced its selection, Ken Bloom. It’s taken a few…
It’s hard to know what to call the Mizel Arts Center (350 South Dahlia Street, 303-399-2660). Its real name is the Mizel Family Cultural Arts Center, but the shorter Mizel Arts Center has been a convention for years. Confusing the issue is that the institution has been merged with the…
