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Class Description:

In this class, students will explore oil painting fundamentals in an accelerated format. They will survey the DAM’s collection and sketch from art within the galleries. Students will create individual pieces inspired by their research sketches, utilizing their newly built skills. The intent of this class is to bring each artist through the entire process of researching and creating a completed piece of work.

What to Expect:

Students will learn or in some cases relearn fundamental skills in addition to some tricks of the trade. This knowledge will help them work within the museum to sketch and generate ideas and bring those ideas into the studio to complete a finished project.

Timeline:

Week 1

• Focus on oil painting fundamentals

Week 2

• Focus on oil painting fundamentals

Week 3

• Gathering sketches and ideas in the museum’s galleries

Week 4

• Gathering sketches and ideas in the museum’s galleries

Week 5

• Painting in the classroom

Week 6

• Painting in the classroom

Class Cancellation Policy:

If a class or workshop needs to be cancelled due to inclement weather or teacher illness, a “make-up” day will be scheduled on a FRIDAY or SATURDAY as the educator’s schedule allows.

Materials:

Students will purchase their own materials and should expect to spend $60-100.

We partner with Meininger’s for local shopping, purchase a kit of your required materials online for in-store pickup, or purchase the below items individually.

Educator:

Born in Denver in 1972, Michael Dowling spent much of his early life as a typical kid apart from being an obsessive drawer. It wasn’t until the age of 25, and after several years studying various subjects as well as working in many fields, that Michael started painting. With that late beginning, Dowling dove full in and began studying extensively. At 28, he decided to sell a burgeoning art sales company and moved to Florence, Italy to focus on painting. He has since returned to his native Denver where he lives and works.

Michael Dowling's work has been characterized as a combination of traditional practices in realism and his explorations of mark, pattern, and color to disrupt that reality. In many compositions, figures presented as portrait, morph into their surreal self, and lone objects tell stories through their subtle positioning. These objects and characters sit in bizarre spaces with intentionally disrupted atmospheres in order to find further meaning within the imagery.

https://m2lr.com/artists/72-michael-dowling/

Class Description:

In Painting: Intermediate Oil, students will explore intermediate oil painting techniques in an accelerated format. They will survey the DAM’s collection and sketch from art within the galleries. Students will create individual pieces inspired by their research sketches, utilizing their newly built skills. The intent of this class is to build skill and guide each artist through the entire process of researching and creating a completed piece of work.

What to Expect:

Students will build upon their fundamental skills to learn and develop intermediate techniques, in addition to some tricks of the trade. This knowledge will help them work within the museum to sketch and generate ideas and bring those ideas into the studio to complete a finished project.

Timeline:

Week 1

• Focus on oil painting techniques

Week 2

• Focus on oil painting techniques

Week 3

• Gathering sketches and ideas in the museum’s galleries

Week 4

• Gathering sketches and ideas in the museum’s galleries

Week 5

• Painting in the classroom

Week 6

• Painting in the classroom

Class Cancellation Policy:

If a class or workshop needs to be cancelled due to inclement weather or teacher illness, a “make-up” day will be scheduled on a FRIDAY or SATURDAY as the educator’s schedule allows.

Materials:

Students will purchase their own materials and should expect to spend $60-100.

We partner with Meininger’s for local shopping, purchase a kit of your required materials online for in-store pickup, or purchase the items individually.

Educator:

Born in Denver in 1972, Michael Dowling spent much of his early life as a typical kid apart from being an obsessive drawer. It wasn’t until the age of 25, and after several years studying various subjects as well as working in many fields, that Michael started painting. With that late beginning, Dowling dove full in and began studying extensively. At 28, he decided to sell a burgeoning art sales company and moved to Florence, Italy to focus on painting. He has since returned to his native Denver where he lives and works.

Michael Dowling's work has been characterized as a combination of traditional practices in realism and his explorations of mark, pattern, and color to disrupt that reality. In many compositions, figures presented as portrait, morph into their surreal self, and lone objects tell stories through their subtle positioning. These objects and characters sit in bizarre spaces with intentionally disrupted atmospheres in order to find further meaning within the imagery.

https://m2lr.com/artists/72-michael-dowling

Class Description:

In this 6-week class, students will be introduced to weaving beyond the loom through techniques including book, card, and tapestry weaving. Students will learn how to construct simple, portable, “looms” using easy-to-find materials that can be adapted to any circumstance. Through each technique, students will learn about the basic elements of woven cloth and explore the design variations and possibilities offered by each weaving approach. The course will engage with the many examples of woven works from the museum’s Indigenous Arts of North America and Textile and Fashion Collections – many of which were created using similar techniques to those we will be using in class – as well as the work of contemporary weaving artists such as Sheila Hicks, Karolina Gnatowski, and Colorado-based artist Steven Frost.

What to Expect:

This class will include a mix of in-class demonstration, skill sharing, and making as well as group gallery visits and discussion. The compact and mobile formats of the looms will allow us to take our work beyond the classroom to draw inspiration from the galleries and the museum’s architecture while connecting with themes of space, place, and portability. Through observing works in the collection and learning new skills, we will take time to reflect on how weaving techniques are engaged across cultures and textile traditions, our positions as learners and artists, and our own relationships with textile histories. Students will leave the class with three sample weavings along with their handmade loom components.

Timeline:

Week 1 – Introductions + Book Weaving

• Introductions and class overview

• Lecture/demonstration: Intro to weaving

• Demonstration/activity: Tapestry weaving on a book loom

• Demonstration/Activity: Basic weave structures

• For next time: bring backstrap materials

Week 2 – Backstrap Weaving

• Re-introductions, questions/reflections from last class

• Demonstration/activity: Cutting off and finishing book weavings (15 mins)

• Slide lecture: Contemporary weaving artists + Backstrap Weaving

• Demonstration/Activity: Setting up the backstrap loom

• For next time: optional reading

Week 3 – Backstrap Weaving + Gallery Visit

• Gallery visits to woven textile objects

• Demonstration/activity: Weaving on a backstrap loom in museum space

• For next week: Bring materials for card weaving

Week 4 – Card Weaving

• Lecture/demonstration: Tablet weaving

• Prepare cards and card looms

• For next week: Optional reading

Week 5 – Card Weaving + Gallery Visit

• Welcome and gather

• Group reading discussion

• Demonstration/activity: Card weaving

• Gallery visit

Week 6 – Card Weaving + Conclusion

• Card weaving in museum space

• Return to classroom, finishing card weavings

• Share work and wrap up

Class Make-up Day Policy:

If a class or workshop needs to be cancelled due to inclement weather or teacher illness, a “make-up” day will be scheduled on a FRIDAY or SATURDAY as the educator’s schedule allows.

Materials:

Students will purchase their own materials and should expect to spend $50-70.

We partner with Meininger’s for local shopping, purchase a kit of your required materials online for in-store pickup, or purchase the items individually.

Educator:

Etta Sandry is an artist, educator, and facilitator currently based in Boulder, Colorado. Rooted in weaving, her interdisciplinary work is situated in the expanded material practices field between craft, contemporary art, and creative research. She has exhibited her work in the United States and Canada and was the 2022 Experimental Weaver in Residence at the Unstable Design Lab at the University of Colorado, Boulder where she now conducts research as a PhD student. Etta completed her MFA in the Fibre & Material Practices program at Concordia University where she also held positions teaching fiber structures and critical thinking & writing. She has over ten years of experience working as an organizer and administrator in arts communities, including roles as a board member at the artist-run centre articule in Montreal and as a volunteer staff in ACRE Residency’s fiber studio in Wisconsin.

www.ettasandry.com

Please note that the Art Emergency: Sendak Edition play runs 45 minutes long. Please purchase your play ticket one hour before or after your entry time to the Wild Things: Art of Maurice Sendak exhibition.

Join curator Jill D’Alessandro and the artist’s son, Bill Barton, for a discussion about Nancy Hemenway Barton's artistic influences, practice, and personal history. From 1966 to 1997, Nancy Hemenway Barton, an artist from the Maine coast, created large-scale wall reliefs using hand-loomed fabrics primarily sourced from indigenous weaving communities in South America and Africa, where she had lived and worked.

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.

Doug Salati, author of the award-winning 2022 picture book Hot Dog, began developing the idea for his book during his Sendak Fellowship in 2015. As an archives assistant at the Maurice Sendak Foundation, Salati immersed himself in Sendak’s creative world, studying original sketches, preliminary drawings, and final works. In this lecture, Salati will share behind-the-scenes insights into his creative process, lessons learned from one of the greatest storytellers of our time, and how Sendak’s methodologies continue to inspire his work today.

Shiva Ahmadi orchestrates exquisitely crafted scenes of beauty and terror. Her vibrant fantasy realms are, upon closer inspection, macabre theaters of conflict where faceless figures engage in endless cycles of struggle and pain. Combining luminous colors and mystical beings with violent imagery, Ahmadi creates watercolor paintings, sculptures, and digital animations that illuminate global issues of migration, war, and brutality against marginalized peoples. Her work is informed by current events in the Middle East and the US, and inspired by Iranian, Turkish, and Indian book and miniature painting traditions.

In 2016, Ahmadi received the Anonymous Was A Woman Award and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. Her work is in the collections of the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; Dallas Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia.

See Wild Things: The Art of Maurice Sendak before the museum opens to the public. This time is exclusive for members.

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

Art as Agency: Creating Beauty at Amache and Beyond

During World War II, over 120,000 Japanese Americans were forcibly relocated from their homes on the West Coast and into American concentration camps, where they lived in uncomfortable barracks while battered by extreme climates without knowing when their unjust incarceration would end. For many, the arts became avenues to beauty, comfort, and survival in the face of prejudice. Inspired by the exhibition "The Life and Art of Tokio Ueyama", the Petrie Institute’s 19th annual symposium explores how painting, gardening, screen printing, and other art forms helped reassert humanity, creativity, and resilience at camps including the Granada Relocation Center in Southeast Colorado, now the Amache National Historic Site.

Museum Friends are invited to an exclusive tour of Confluence of Nature: Nancy Hemenway Barton, featuring her large-scale textile wall reliefs crafted with hand-loomed fabrics from indigenous communities in South America and Africa. This tour, led by Barton's sons—Rick, Brad, and Bill—along with Jill D'Alessandro, the Director and Curator of the Avenir Institute of Textile Arts and Fashion, provides a unique opportunity to glimpse into Barton’s creative process and the cultural inspirations that influenced her work. Join us to explore her impactful artistic legacy up close.

The museum’s Sensory-Friendly Mornings is a program for kids with neurodiversity or sensory processing disorders and their families to visit the museum in a safe and fun way. The museum will open early, dim the lights, and provide tools to aid and guide a sensory-friendly experience for the whole family.

Vance Kirkland, namesake of Kirkland Museum, was a lifelong painter, art educator, and proponent of modernism in Denver, Colorado. His involvement with the University of Denver, Denver Art Museum, and many of Colorado's artists from 1929 to 1981 left a lasting impact on the cultural landscape of our state. Kirkland Museum's merger with the Denver Art Museum is the culmination of almost 100 years of connections. Join us to learn about this visionary artist and his enduring influence.

Maya D. Wright grew up in Denver and has worked at Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art since 2005, most recently as Director of Interpretation. She is now on staff at the Denver Art Museum, managing the interpretation and communications aspects of the Kirkland integration.

Art as Agency: Creating Beauty at Amache and Beyond

During World War II, over 120,000 Japanese Americans were forcibly relocated from their homes on the West Coast and into American concentration camps, where they lived in uncomfortable barracks while battered by extreme climates without knowing when their unjust incarceration would end. For many, the arts became avenues to beauty, comfort, and survival in the face of prejudice. Inspired by the exhibition "The Life and Art of Tokio Ueyama", the Petrie Institute’s 19th annual symposium explores how painting, gardening, screen printing, and other art forms helped reassert humanity, creativity, and resilience at camps including the Granada Relocation Center in Southeast Colorado, now the Amache National Historic Site.

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.

Join CultureHaus for the Wild Things Ball on Saturday, February 8, 2025 (21+). Ticket includes exclusive access to Wild Things: The Art of Maurice Sendak, an open bar in addition to non-alc options and party bites, plus music, entertainment and artful activations all night long.

Please note that the exhibition is filled with over 400 wonderful artworks and delightful surprises. We recommend planning to spend at least 1 1/2-2 hours in the exhibition to ensure you see it all.

This ticket includes General Admission to the museum. To purchase a General Admission ticket without access to Wild Things, click here.

Purchase tickets to a Wild Things Member Morning here.

Access Free Day special pricing for Wild Things: The Art of Maurice Sendak here.

Wild Things: The Art of Maurice Sendak presents more than 400 artworks created by Maurice Sendak. One of the most versatile artists of the twentieth century, Sendak is best known for picture books, especially the award-winning titles Where the Wild Things Are, In the Night Kitchen, Outside Over There, and Nutshell Library. He also designed theater sets and collaborated on films.

Wild Things is named after Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, the beloved children’s book he authored in 1963 that became a cultural touchstone. The exhibition's title signals to all the beauty, whimsy, and mischief that his art inspired over his 65-year career. Visitors will see unique examples of Sendak’s timeless art, such as the final artworks for Where the Wild Things Are, and get a sense of his extraordinary skill and his deep understanding of the process of creating picture books and designs for the stage, television, and film productions. The show will include a wide array of drawings, paintings, posters, and mockups for books. It will also include set designs for the Where the Wild Things Are opera and the costumes for the live-action, feature-length film.

Alongside Sendak’s work, Wild Things will showcase works by other artists that Sendak collected throughout his life, tracing the origins of his creativity to William Blake, Winsor McCay, Beatrix Potter, George Stubbs, and Walt Disney. Sendak’s collaborations with distinguished directors, composers, writers, and choreographers such as Carroll Ballard, Frank Corsaro, Carole King, Spike Jonze, Tony Kushner, among many others, are also illuminated throughout the exhibition.

Wild Things: The Art of Maurice Sendak is a ticketed exhibition and not included in general admission. On free days, enjoy $15 tickets to see Wild Things: The Art of Maurice Sendak.

Wild Things: The Art of Maurice Sendak presents more than 400 artworks created by Maurice Sendak. One of the most versatile artists of the twentieth century, Sendak is best known for picture books, especially the award-winning titles Where the Wild Things Are, In the Night Kitchen, Outside Over There, and Nutshell Library. He also designed theater sets and collaborated on films.

Wild Things is named after Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are, the beloved children's book he authored in 1963 that became a cultural touchstone. The exhibition's title signals to all the beauty, whimsy, and mischief that his art inspired over his 65-year career. Visitors will see unique examples of Sendak's timeless art, such as the final artworks for Where the Wild Things Are, and get a sense of his extraordinary skill and his deep understanding of the process of creating picture books and designs for the stage, television, and film productions. The show will include a wide array of drawings, paintings, posters, and mockups for books. It will also include set designs for the Where the Wild Things Are opera and the costumes for the live-action, feature-length film.

Alongside Sendak's work, Wild Things will showcase works by other artists that Sendak collected throughout his life, tracing the origins of his creativity to William Blake, Winsor McCay, Beatrix Potter, George Stubbs, and Walt Disney. Sendak's collaborations with distinguished directors, composers, writers, and choreographers such as Carroll Ballard, Frank Corsaro, Carole King, Spike Jonze, Tony Kushner, among many others, are also illuminated throughout the exhibition.

This ticket includes General Admission to the museum.