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COMPOSING COLOR: THE WORLD OF ALMA THOMAS

American artist Alma Thomas once wrote “Love comes by looking.” In this multi-session course, take a closer look at the artist, her art, and her world. Learn about Thomas’s creative philosophies and inspiration, fall in love with her eye for color and pattern, and dive into the deeper context of her long life and impactful career.

Session #3 – The Meaning and Making of Color

For Alma Thomas, the “spirit and living soul of the world” was manifest through colors. She used art’s most luscious resource brilliantly, concentrating on what she called “beauty and happiness,” rather than urgencies of “inhumanity.” This session offers deep context for how and why artists throughout history have found, manipulated, coded, and celebrated color to achieve staggeringly diverse ends. It’s the ultimate shape-shifter. Color produces happiness—and it also registers power, privilege, spirituality, symbolism, technologies, emotion, and reason. With color at the forefront, artists create endless pathways to expression and offer us inexhaustible insights.

Presented by Stella Paul, writer and educator, author of Chromaphilia: The Story of Color in Art

COMPOSING COLOR: THE WORLD OF ALMA THOMAS

American artist Alma Thomas once wrote “Love comes by looking.” In this multi-session course, take a closer look at the artist, her art, and her world. Learn about Thomas’s creative philosophies and inspiration, fall in love with her eye for color and pattern, and dive into the deeper context of her long life and impactful career.

Session #3 – The Meaning and Making of Color

For Alma Thomas, the “spirit and living soul of the world” was manifest through colors. She used art’s most luscious resource brilliantly, concentrating on what she called “beauty and happiness,” rather than urgencies of “inhumanity.” This session offers deep context for how and why artists throughout history have found, manipulated, coded, and celebrated color to achieve staggeringly diverse ends. It’s the ultimate shape-shifter. Color produces happiness—and it also registers power, privilege, spirituality, symbolism, technologies, emotion, and reason. With color at the forefront, artists create endless pathways to expression and offer us inexhaustible insights.

Presented by Stella Paul, writer and educator, author of Chromaphilia: The Story of Color in Art

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.

Oftentimes, researchers in the Denver Art Museum’s provenance department travel back in time to understand artist histories, art movements, military conflicts, and the geopolitical or social trends that may have influenced not only the subject matter of an object, but any previous ownership before good record keeping existed.

Join Associate Provenance Researcher Renée Albiston and explore Italian Renaissance artist Guiseppe Arcimboldo’s bold and whimsical style, why his paintings were known as grotesques, the allegorical themes they were meant to symbolize, and their place within private royal collections at the time. Renée will share her research on new discoveries of ownership going back to the Napoleonic era and how two of these grotesques came into the Denver Art Museum’s permanent collection.

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

Members see it first! Join us for a preview of Wild Things: The Art of Maurice Sendak.

Access for two to lectures, programming and exclusive enrichment events.

The Museum Friends membership add-on offers DAM members an opportunity to deepen their support and broaden their horizons with a community of like-minded art aficionados. Denver Art Museum Friends take part in educational activities, lectures, exclusive tours, and more.

Access for one to lectures, programming and exclusive enrichment events.

The Museum Friends membership add-on offers DAM members an opportunity to deepen their support and broaden their horizons with a community of like-minded art aficionados. Denver Art Museum Friends take part in educational activities, lectures, exclusive tours, and more.

For over three decades, artist and educator Christina Fernandez has been using photography to explore themes of migration, labor, gender, and her own Chicana identity. Part documentary, part conceptual, part political, her work brings attention to often overlooked narratives and perspectives, socioeconomic issues, and personal history through images of the landscape, the urban/suburban environment, and forms of portraiture.

Join us for unique insights into the life and work of artist Maurice Sendak! Lynn Caponera and Jonathan Weinberg grew up as close friends of Sendak, and they now preserve his legacy at The Maurice Sendak Foundation as Executive Director and Curator, respectively. They will share stories about the artist and, in a conversation with Christoph Heinrich moderated by Stefania Van Dyke, will discuss the excitement and challenges of creating the exhibition Wild Things. This talk also will be livestreamed.

This is an in-person ticket.

To purchase a virtual ticket click here.

This presentation complements the exhibition The Life and Art of Tokio Ueyama, on display in the western American art permanent galleries on the 7th floor of the Martin Building until June 1, 2025. Curator of the exhibition JR Henneman will provide an overview of the artist and his life, including his studies at prestigious American institutions and his travels abroad. She will also consider his artwork, which features landscape, portraiture, and still life, and acknowledge the incarceration of Japanese people in the US during World War II between 1942 and 1945. At that time, Ueyama was forcibly removed from his home in southern California and sent to the Granada Relocation Center, now known as the Amache National Historic Site, in southeast Colorado. This presentation will consider how the DAM discovered and interpreted the artwork of this overlooked American artist and how we sensitively tell this challenging World War II history.

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.

Indian culture attributes a range of aesthetic, sensory, and divine qualities to the natural environment, as documented in literary and religious texts dating as far back as the early centuries BCE. In this broad-ranging lecture, Tushara Bindu Gude will discuss the ways in which ideas regarding beauty, romance, character, and divinity can be read in artistic renderings of flowers, trees, and gardens. Dr. Gude received her Ph.D from the University of California, Los Angeles. She has served as a curator of South and Southeast Asian Art for over twenty years, first at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco and, until recently, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

For over three decades, artist and educator Christina Fernandez has been using photography to explore themes of migration, labor, gender, and her own Chicana identity. Part documentary, part conceptual, part political, her work brings attention to often overlooked narratives and perspectives, socioeconomic issues, and personal history through images of the landscape, the urban/suburban environment, and forms of portraiture.

Join us for unique insights into the life and work of artist Maurice Sendak! Lynn Caponera and Jonathan Weinberg grew up as close friends of Sendak, and they now preserve his legacy at The Maurice Sendak Foundation as Executive Director and Curator, respectively. They will share stories about the artist and, in a conversation with Christoph Heinrich moderated by Stefania Van Dyke, will discuss the excitement and challenges of creating the exhibition Wild Things. This talk also will be livestreamed.

This is a virtual ticket.

To purchase an in-person ticket click here.

This presentation complements the exhibition The Life and Art of Tokio Ueyama, on display in the western American art permanent galleries on the 7th floor of the Martin Building until June 1, 2025. Curator of the exhibition JR Henneman will provide an overview of the artist and his life, including his studies at prestigious American institutions and his travels abroad. She will also consider his artwork, which features landscape, portraiture, and still life, and acknowledge the incarceration of Japanese people in the US during World War II between 1942 and 1945. At that time, Ueyama was forcibly removed from his home in southern California and sent to the Granada Relocation Center, now known as the Amache National Historic Site, in southeast Colorado. This presentation will consider how the DAM discovered and interpreted the artwork of this overlooked American artist and how we sensitively tell this challenging World War II history.

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.

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.

Purchase tickets to the Member Preview of Wild Things: The Art of Maurice Sendak here.

Purchase tickets to a Wild Things Member Morning here.

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 Sendak³ Where the Wild Things Are, the beloved children³ 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 Sendak³ 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 Sendak³ 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. Sendak³ 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.

The basic benefits including unlimited free general admission for one for an entire year, plus two complimentary one-time use general admission guest passes.