Lectures and Talks

Join us on Saturday, April 18, to hear directly from artists featured in the expansive exhibition The Stars We Do Not See: Australian Indigenous Art. Moderated by DAM curator John Lukavic, this panel discussion brings together participating artists to explore the exhibition’s themes and share insights into their creative practices. Centering Indigenous perspectives, the conversation will offer a deeper look at the stories, ideas, and cultural contexts that shape the works on view.

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.

Please join the Denver Art Museum's Native Arts and Provenance departments, along with special guests from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago, for a lively panel discussion on the vital role provenance research plays in museums.

The panel will examine provenance research as a cornerstone of ethical collecting and explore how it contributes to the return of objects to their rightful countries of origin. The discussion will also address the importance of fostering international relationships that extend beyond repatriation, highlighting the recent return of a plaque to the Kingdom of Benin. This will include a brief intercontinental conversation with Mr. Olugbile Holloway, Director General of the National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM) of Nigeria.

Featured in-person panelists include MacKenzie Mallon, Head of Provenance for the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, and Dr. Jacques Schuhmacher, Executive Director of Provenance for the Art Institute of Chicago. They will be joined by Denver Art Museum Arts of Africa Fellow Syokau Mutonga and Provenance Research Fellow Mac Coyle, with moderation by Renée Albiston, Head of Provenance Research.