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In this six-week class, students will abandon the idea of working on just one painting at a time and dive into creating many at once! Students will explore the dynamic process of making multiple abstract paintings in tandem, developing a cohesive set of works while experimenting with style, texture, and color. Instruction will begin with essential acrylic painting techniques and a bite-sized introduction to color theory, followed by guided exploration of the medium. Students will learn to balance spontaneity and intention while keeping their paintings connected yet distinct. By the end of the course, students will have completed their own miniature body of work with four abstract acrylic paintings and will have gained the skills and confidence to keep creating beyond class. All skill levels are welcome; this class is perfect for curious beginners to seasoned artists looking to shake up their process.

This all-level studio class explores the art of paper and bookmaking through the lens of Modern & Contemporary Art as well as cross-cultural traditions. Students will learn hands-on techniques in papercraft and book arts—ranging from folded and stitched book structures to sculptural paper forms—while drawing inspiration from African, Asian, Ancient American, and Latin American artistic practices.

Throughout the course, students will engage with select works from the Denver Art Museum’s Collections and exhibitions, using these as catalysts for creative exploration. By studying pattern, symbolism, and material traditions across cultures, students will discover how book arts can become a vessel for storytelling, cultural exchange, and personal expression.

The class emphasizes experimentation with media such as handmade and recycled papers, collage and mixed media. Students will leave with a series of unique artist books and paper-based projects that reflect both technical skill and imaginative interpretation.

No prior experience is required, only curiosity and a willingness to explore the possibilities of paper.

Have you ever wondered about an artworks journey before finding a home at the Denver Art Museum? Museum Friends are invited to join the provenance team for an evening of sleuthing and storytelling and learn more about the research that sheds light on an object’s origin story. As part of the program, guests will explore a selection of the museum’s collections including Western Art, Arts of Asia, European and American Art before 1900, Northwest Coast Indigenous Art, and Arts of Africa, to see firsthand how provenance work unfolds across cultures and time periods.

The evening kicks off with a relaxed reception and stunning views from the Martin Building's Summit Room terrace.

Photographer Alexey Titarenko explores the character of a city and its people, blending the reality of a moment with metaphor. By using long exposure times and darkroom techniques, he makes photographs that evoke a mood and the passage of time.

Titarenko grew up and studied photography in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg, Russia). He first made collages and photomontages commenting on the oppressive communist regime but after the fall of the Soviet Union, he shifted focus. Inspired by literature and music, he began making pictures that poetically express the feelings and the stories of the lives of people in St. Petersburg. Alexey Titarenko took this approach to photographing other cities including Venice, Italy, Havana, Cuba, and New York City, where he lives and works today.

Following this talk, there will be a book signing of the new expanded edition of The City is a Novel (2025).

This program is presented in connection with the photography exhibition What We’ve Been Up To: People, February 8 – September 29, 2026.

Photographer and educator Zora J. Murff creates pictures of people and the urban and natural environments that surround them. For some projects, he also incorporates appropriated imagery to reflect on his own experiences and to examine social and racial injustices. His work considers minimized histories, experiences of being a Black person in America, and the ways visual culture shapes and is shaped by us.

Zora J. Murff’s monograph True Colors (or, Affirmations in a Crisis) was published by Aperture in 2022 and he received a prestigious Infinity Award from the International Center for Photography in 2023. Currently, he is Assistant Professor of Photography at University of Oregon.

This program is presented in connection with the photography exhibition What We’ve Been Up To: People , February 8 – September 29, 2026.

All members are invited to attend the DAM's Annual Membership Meeting. RSVP required.

Join Jill D’Alessandro, Director and Curator of the Avenir Institute of Textile Arts and Fashion, for a behind-the-scenes look at Conversation Pieces: Stories from the Fashion Archives.  Showcasing nearly 70 designs, the exhibition explores DAM’s permanent fashion collection, pairing the historic with the avant-garde to create surprising juxtapositions.  In this talk, D’Alessandro will share a few of the stories behind these garments and how they entered the museum’s holdings.

Create & Play is an early childhood program for ages 0-5 and their caregivers. The group is welcomed on the third Thursday of each month from October through May.

Upon arrival, participants check in at the front desk in the Hamilton Building and head down to Sharp Auditorium. There the kids are greeted by two very talented actors who initiate everyone into the "Imagination Factory." The kids are then tasked with solving a big problem: the creativity juice has run out! They must get more! To do this, the group is led to the galleries to collect the creativity juice by looking at and engaging with art! The program ends with artmaking in the early childhood classroom.

Creativity in Practice is the DAM³ professional development for early childhood educators designed to increase their confidence in incorporating art and creativity in the classroom. This two-day institute offers 7 hours of professional development credit through Colorado Shines PDIS.

Sessions:

Teacher Art Identity: Reflecting on teacher identity in relation to art and creativity.

Teaching for Artistic Behavior (TAB): Introduction to TAB techniques and materials.

Art, Drama & Storytelling: Incorporating drama and storytelling with art and creativity to foster social emotional learning.

Teacher Lesson Planning with Objects and Artworks: Introduction to using objects and artworks at the museum to meet early childhood learning objectives.

Dates:

February 28th | 10am´pm

March 1st | 10am-3pm

In-person at the DAM.

If you teach a Title I or Head Start school, you qualify for a 50% discount on the Creativity in Practice Mini Institute. Family Friends and Family homeschool educators qualify for additional discounts as well. Please email Claudia Munoz cmunoz@denverartmuseumn.org for more information on discounted registration.

The basic benefits, including unlimited free general admission for an entire year for two named card-holders and four guests per visit, up to six total adult tickets per visit, including the cardholder(s) plus:

• Expanded reciprocal admission benefits at more than 500 museums nationwide via the Art Museum Reciprocal Network (AMRN), the Reciprocal Organization of Associated Museums (ROAM), the Western Reciprocal Program, and Museum's West
• Four free admissions for every ticketed exhibition

• Advance purchase for ticketed exhibitions
• Six complimentary one-time use general admission guest passes
• 30% off coupon for one item in the Shop

Join us for our annual Día del Niño (Children's Day) festivities, a global celebration of children, with a wide variety of live music, dance performances, art making, and free general admission for everyone.

April 27 is a Free Day at the DAM. Advanced reservation is recommended, but not required.

Give to the Denver Art Museum's Annual Fund

Your 100% tax-deductible contribution supports inspiring art connections, powerful artist collaborations, community-minded programming at the Denver Art Museum. During these unprecedented times, your donation helps the museum reimagine how we connect in person and online through a series of new opportunities for visitors of all ages. Thank you for your support of the Denver Art Museum's annual fund.

Each label in the Denver Art Museum lists the artwork’s materials. From traditional mediums (oil paint, bronze, clay) to everyday objects (bottle caps, fluorescents lights, pantyhose), these materials have larger human stories to tell.

In this three-session course, experience the museum’s collections with a look at creative processes and materials. Through interactive lectures, hands-on exploration, and time in the galleries, we’ll ask, “How’s it made?” and learn what materials and methods can tell us about global human contact, scientific and creative innovation, and changing definitions of art across time. Walk away with refreshed perspectives on the collections and discover new ways of approaching any work of art.

Where do paints and pigments come from, and how has that changed over time? Can you name the bug that artists have used for centuries to create red color? What technologies gave rise to a newly vibrant palette for the Impressionist artists? And how does a particular type of paint impact creative expression? Explore these questions and others as we investigate paint from earth to lab to canvas, textile, paper and more. Along the way, uncover stories of innovation, industrialization, and globalization.

This is session one of How Do We Art? Materials, Methods, and the Stories They Tell. Purchase the full three session course here.

One of our oldest art forms, humans have created objects from clay across cultures, geography, and time. What exactly is clay, and how have artists used this foundational, universal medium to tell stories, connect with the spirits, and create functional (and beautiful) objects? Explore porcelain, earthenware, stoneware, and other ceramic mediums and processes as we consider the many roles clay has played in society.

This is session two of How Do We Art? Materials, Methods, and the Stories They Tell. Purchase the full three session course here.

Celebrate Denver’s Month of Printmaking (Mo’Print) with a deep dive into printmaking processes and histories. Pre-social media, printmaking revolutionized communication, access to images, and creative expression. In this session, learn about printmaking techniques (engraving, woodcut, lithography, screenprint, and more), and consider how prints have helped us to rally for a cause, advertise, document, and share beauty.

This is session three of How Do We Art? Materials, Methods, and the Stories They Tell. Purchase the full three session course here.

Museum Friends are invited to a special evening exploring Ink & Thread: Codices and the Art of Storytelling.

The program begins with a small reception and a chance to meet members of the curatorial team. Guests will then enjoy a curator-led tour offering insights into ancient Mesoamerican codices and their influence on contemporary works by Enrique Chagoya and Eric Garcia. The tour will also highlight Leslie Tillett’s monumental tapestry and the newly gifted preparatory studies that illuminate his research process. The evening offers a focused look at how artists across time have used codices to record histories, reinterpret narratives, and communicate cultural memory.

Andrea Carlson imagines in-between spaces of dislocation and belonging, destruction and reclamation, domination and liberation. Carlson (Grand Portage Ojibwe and European settler descent) considers how the land is an embodiment of a people’s histories and memories, creating intense and deeply introspective landscapes comprising prismatic layers of color, text, flora, fauna, and cultural objects.

As an Indigenous futurist, Carlson contemplates “deep time” and cycles of the natural world, using multiple sheets of paper to suggest the movement of objects, landforms, and other characters. Her dynamic compositions reference issues of ecology, challenge colonial narratives in the US, and envision a future of long-lasting Native resilience, knowledge, and survival.

Born in 1979, Carlson earned her BA in 2003 from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis and MFA in 2005 from Minneapolis College of Art & Design. Her honors include fellowships from the Joan Mitchell Foundation and United States Artists Fellowship and awards from Artadia and Creative Capital. Carlson has had solo exhibitions at the Minneapolis Institute of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor. Her work is included in permanent collections of the Denver Art Museum; Milwaukee Art Museum; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others. Carlson is the co-founder of the Center for Native Futures, an art space dedicated to the work of Native artists in Chicago, and lives and works in Minnesota.

Carlson joins Rory Padeken, Vicki and Kent Logan Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, in a conversation about her process, inspiration, and influences.

Didier William uses vivid colors and bold patterns to evoke memories of growing up in Miami as an immigrant from Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Inspired by Haitian history, language, and mythology, and personal experience, William unpacks the legacies of colonialism, social resistance, and the struggle for political agency. Incorporating traditions from painting, collage, wood carving, and printmaking, he materially visualizes the intersections of identity and culture.

Powerful, faceless figures appear in William’s otherworldly, electrified landscapes. Their bodies, covered with carved eyes conscript the viewer into a flamboyant narrative made deliberately queer by refusing explicit sex and gender signifiers. “It’s a way for the figures in my paintings to return the curios gaze,” comments Williams. “Not just with their eyes, but with every square inch of their skin.”

Rendering his figures with larger-than-life anatomies, William transforms them into supernatural beings or what he calls “Titans.” His humanoid forms touch, wrestle, and embrace as they seek out tenderness, care, and belonging. They often appear to float or at least try to overcome the forces of gravity as they aim for higher realms.

Enrique Chagoya’s prints, drawings, paintings, and codices in the tradition of satirical cartoons have brought him international recognition. Chagoya skillfully combines contrasting images sourced from secular and religious iconographies and popular culture to address colonialism, inequality, and international conflicts with biting humor. Using familiar pop icons such as Superman and Mickey Mouse, he creates deceptively friendly points of entry for a discussion of US hegemony and colonialism.

Chagoya began making political cartoons in the 1970s for union and student newspapers while studying economics at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Me?xico in Mexico City. He later directed rural development projects in the city of Veracruz, an experience that ignited his burgeoning interest in transnational politics that would eventually become the subject of his art. Chagoya employs a process which he calls “reverse anthropology,” depicting contemporary events on Amate, a type of paper used in traditional Central American bookmaking, folded like an accordion and read from right to left. His subjects range from revisionist histories of British and Spanish settlement in the Americas to challenging racial stereotypes.