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Transform the everyday into the extraordinary! Explore how artists like El Anatsui turn recycled materials into stunning works of art, then head to the workshop to experiment with found objects and build your own bold, imaginative assemblage.

From materials to inspiration, nature shows up in art in all kinds of ways. This week, we’ll think about the connection between art and the environment as we explore the galleries. By the end of the week, you’ll be able to take home some nature-inspired artwork of your own!

Pack your imagination and get your art passport ready! This week, we’ll explore artwork from cultures across the globe. Each stop on our journey inspires a new hands-on project back in the workshop, letting campers create their own world of art.

From Navajo weavings to Chinese ceramics, patterns are everywhere. Campers explore the galleries to discover how artists use patterns across cultures, then head to the workshop to design and create their own patterned artwork.

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.

Hayv Kahraman paints graceful and commanding women in intertwining and seemingly impossible poses. They appear like translucent apparitions with inky halos of hair and silken skin rendered delicately in layers of oil paint and adorned in geometric Islamic patterns. Together they form a collective of Middle Eastern women, a motif Kahraman employs to celebrate her cultural identity, once repressed by violent assimilative and colonial forces.

Kahraman draws from her experience as a refugee in exile from her native Iraq, weaving ideas of narrative, memory, and diaspora. The body as object and subject play a central role in her practice, functioning as both a self-portrait and embodiment of a larger whole. Her recent work has addressed the devasting impact on vulnerable communities as a result of war, the parallels between medical terminology and military metaphors, and ecological disasters.

Visit The Kirkland during special Members-only Mornings on Saturday, March 7 and Saturday, March 14 from 9-10 am.

We'll open The Kirkland early for you to visit two new exhibitions on view: Space is the Place: Art and Design in the Atomic Age and 'Round the Clock: 24 Hours of Colorado in Prints.

Enjoy additional savings in the Shop at The Kirkland during these special member hours.

To celebrate Night at the Museums, the Denver Art Museum will be free to all from 5 - 10 pm. Explore our reimagined, expanded campus. With innovative creative spaces, incredible views, and inspiring art from around the world and across time, there is something for everyone to love.

(Re)discover how art opens minds, conversations, and possibilities. Learn more at denverartmuseum.org.

Advance ticket reservations are strongly encouraged.

The Ponti restaurant will also be open. Reservations available at thepontidenver.com

With Pissarro's Impressionism as a springboard, the Perspectives on Pissarro program series offers a fresh take on the exhibition, the artist, and his world.

Join curators, art historians, and a horticulturalist as they share insights into Pissarro's work and the natural landscapes that inspired him. Register for individual sessions or enjoy a discount for the full series.

Please note that this link is for purchasing tickets to livestream recordings of the lecture series so that you can watch from home. To purchase in-person tickets, please click here.

With Pissarro's Impressionism as a springboard, the Perspectives on Pissarro program series offers a fresh take on the exhibition, the artist, and his world.

Join curators, art historians, and a horticulturalist as they share insights into Pissarro's work and the natural landscapes that inspired him. Register for individual sessions or enjoy a discount for the full series.

Join us to celebrate Native American art and culture at the 35th Annual Friendship Powwow on Saturday, September 7. Everyone is welcome!

Please join the Denver Art Museum’s Native Arts and Provenance departments, along with special guest Mr. Olugbile Holloway, Director General of the National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM) of Nigeria, for a special evening discussing the recent repatriation of a plaque from the Kingdom of Benin. We are pleased to host Mr. Holloway for a lively panel discussion focused on the significance of repatriating Benin Bronzes with Nigeria and the importance of fostering international relationships that go beyond the return of objects. We will also discuss the importance of provenance research and the role it plays in returning objects to rightful countries of origin.

The Denver Art Museum has held a long-standing relationship with the government of Nigeria, the Oba of Benin and the NCMM for over five decades. This partnership has been dedicated to the respectful identification and repatriation of cultural artifacts, including the repatriation of the Benin Bronze plaque in the DAM’s collection, now on view in the Arts of Africa gallery, after the agreement of a five-year loan from the Nigerian government. Repatriations like this reflect the DAM’s commitment to ongoing collaboration with African communities, working to build trust and repair wrongs of the past.

Please note that this ticket allows you to watch the lecture online via livestream; for in-person tickets, please click here.

Please join the Denver Art Museum’s Native Arts and Provenance departments, along with special guest Mr. Olugbile Holloway, Director General of the National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM) of Nigeria, for a special evening discussing the recent repatriation of a plaque from the Kingdom of Benin. We are pleased to host Mr. Holloway for a lively panel discussion focused on the significance of repatriating Benin Bronzes with Nigeria and the importance of fostering international relationships that go beyond the return of objects. We will also discuss the importance of provenance research and the role it plays in returning objects to rightful countries of origin.

The Denver Art Museum has held a long-standing relationship with the government of Nigeria, the Oba of Benin and the NCMM for over five decades. This partnership has been dedicated to the respectful identification and repatriation of cultural artifacts, including the repatriation of the Benin Bronze plaque in the DAM’s collection, now on view in the Arts of Africa gallery, after the agreement of a five-year loan from the Nigerian government. Repatriations like this reflect the DAM’s commitment to ongoing collaboration with African communities, working to build trust and repair wrongs of the past.

Donations to this fund are invested by the DAM foundation with the intention to grow the fund in value over time. This fund provides an annual distribution based on the Foundation's policy.  Distributed funds are used to acquire new artwork for the DAM.

The Museum regularly reconciles expenditures made from distributed funds to ensure that they are allocated as intended.

Corporate membership packages allow you to curate the benefits your company receives at every level of support. From access and networking, to complimentary event space and VIP invitations, your company can have it all or select only what means the most to employees, clients, and stakeholders. To learn more about corporate membership options and benefits, please contact us at 

CorporatePartnerships@denverartmuseum.org.

Every Corporate Membership Includes:

• Corporate and Executive membership cards for free general admission
• Corporate special exhibition ticket price available to all employees
• 10% discount in the museum shop
• Recognition in the museum's Annual Report
• Access to virtual programming and art making activities
• Bimonthly member magazine On & Off the Wall and Beyond the Walls patron newsletter
• News and updates through exclusive member communications

Please select the date you would like to visit the Denver Art Museum. Your tickets will be valid for the entire day.

The basic benefits including unlimited free general admission for one for an entire year, plus two free general admission guest passes

Corporate membership packages allow you to curate the benefits your company receives at every level of support. From access and networking, to complimentary event space and VIP invitations, your company can have it all or select only what means the most to employees, clients, and stakeholders. To learn more about corporate membership options and benefits, please contact us at 

CorporatePartnerships@denverartmuseum.org.

Every Corporate Membership Includes:

• Corporate and Executive membership cards for free general admission
• Corporate special exhibition ticket price available to all employees
• 10% discount in the museum shop
• Recognition in the museum's Annual Report
• Access to virtual programming and art making activities
• Bimonthly member magazine On & Off the Wall and Beyond the Walls patron newsletter
• News and updates through exclusive member communications