Denver Art Museum

The Denver Art Museum (DAM) is an art museum in Denver, Colorado, located in the Civic Center. The DAM is one of the major art museums between the West Coast and Chicago, with encyclopedic holdings of over 70,000 different pieces from throughout the eras and continents. It is well-known for its American Indian art collection, as well as The Petrie Institute of Western American Art, which manages the museum's Western art collection.  and its other collections of over 70,000 varied pieces from throughout the world. In 1971, legendary Italian architect Gio Ponti created the museum's distinctive Martin Building (previously known as the North Building).In 2018, the museum launched a $150 million remodeling project to integrate the exhibits .site and revive Ponti's original building, featuring additional exhibition spaces, two new eating options, and a new welcome center

History

1893–1923

The Denver Artists Club founded in 1893 is where the museum got its start.

 In 1917, the Club renamed itself the Denver Art Association, and two years later, it established its first galleries in the City and County building. In 1922, the museum established galleries in the Chappell House. Mrs. George Cranmer and Delos Chappell gave the Logan Street residence to the museum. The Denver Art Association was renamed the Denver Art Museum in 1923. (DAM).

1948–1971

The DAM bought a building on Acoma and 14th Avenue on the south side of Civic Center Park in 1948.

The building was refurbished by Denver architect Burnham Hoyt and reopened in 1949 as the Schreier Memorial Gallery.. While the Schreier Gallery was a substantial acquisition, the DAM still desired to expand. The Kress Foundation added to the pressure by offering to gift three collections worth more than $2 million on the condition that DAM create a new structure to hold the works.  DAM sought funding assistance from the city and county of Denver. However, in 1952, voters rejected a resolution bond. Despite this setback, the museum continued to gather money and, in 1954, it erected a new structure, the South Wing (today known as the Bach Wing. This allowed DAM to obtain the three Kress Foundation collections. In 1971, the North Building, a seven-story, 210,000-square-foot expansion, opened. The structure was built by Italian modernist architect Gio Ponti in collaboration with Denver architects James Sadler Associates. "Art is a treasure, and these thin but jealous walls guard it," Ponti stated. It is his only finished design in the United States.  Ponti designed the DAM structure to deviate from standard museum paradigms. The two-towered "castle-like" façade has 24 sides, and more than one million Dow Corning-designed reflective glass tiles cover the building's outside.

2006–Present

In 2006, the museum added the Duncan Pavilion and the Frederic C. Hamilton Building. The Duncan Pavilion, a 5,700-square-foot second-story addition to the Bach Wing, was built to handle bridge traffic from the new Hamilton Building and the existing Hamilton Building.

Building North (1971). Duncan Pavilion was created to be kid- and family-friendly while still being adaptable to a variety of uses, including as the museum's Untitled Final Friday series, wedding receptions, and other special events. The Denver Art Museum announced a $150 million transformative project in December 2016 to integrate the museum's campus and modernize Ponti's structure (formerly known as the Martin Building), which includes the establishment of additional exhibition spaces, two new eating choices, and the new Sie Welcome Center. The reconstruction project, directed by Machado Silvetti and Denver-based Fentress Architects, is scheduled to be completed in 2021, just in time for the 50th anniversary of Ponti's original structure. In 2019, the Duncan Pavilion was destroyed.

Awards

The Hamilton Building expansion of the DAM received a Presidential Award of Excellence from the American Institute of Steel Construction—2007 AISC's Innovative Design in Engineering and Architecture with Structural Steel (IDEAS2) Awards competition due to the unique configuration of the steel used to produce the building.

New Art Galleries

Machado Silvetti and Fentress Architects horizontally bisected the museum's Martin Building's original Bonfils-Stanton Gallery on level one to create 10,000 square feet (929 m2) of new gallery space on the second level within the original footprint of the building: the Joanne Posner-Mayer Mezzanine Gallery, the Amanda J. Precourt Design Galleries, and the Ellen Bruss Design Studio. To achieve the interior design of these new exhibition rooms, the museum cooperated with the New York-based design company OMA, which previously collaborated with the museum on the 2018 blockbuster exhibition Dior: From Paris to the World.

Hours

We are open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and on Tuesdays until 9 p.m. Thanksgiving and Christmas are closed.

Admission for Everyone

TICKETS COLORADO RESIDENTS NON-RESIDENTS

Adults

$15 $19

Seniors (65 & older) (65 & older)

$12 $16

Students (with ID) (with ID)

$12 $16

Veterans and active military personnel (with ID)

$12 $16

Youth (18 & younger) (18 & younger)

Free Free \sMembers

Free Free