Friday at the Western Bridge opening “You Complete Me,” Betsey introduced me as her “tireless Communications student assistant.” This week, however, I am in Denver, home of the 28-sided Denver Art Museum, Red Rocks Park and Amphitheatre, and the Denver Botanic Gardens. So, rather than chatting to UW MFA Students about their upcoming show, or attempting to tan from Josiah McElheny: The Last Scattering Surface, I am tirelessly seeing art and learning from some of this nation’s greatest museum leaders at the American Association of Museums Annual Meeting. The Henry Art Gallery is well represented here by our very own curator Elizabeth Brown who presented in panel entitled “Curators, Objects and Interpretation: New Approaches to Reach the Visitor” yesterday.
There is a lot of familiar art in Denver. Gee’s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt show that I saw last year at the Tacoma Art Museum is now at Denver Art Museum, along with Inspiring Impressionism, due to premiere at the Seattle Art Museum on June 19th. Between sessions I ventured to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver for my first introduction to David Altmejd’s sculptural installation. Two fellow museology students and I literally whooped for joy when we entered the exhibition.
STAR POWER: Museum as Body Electric is a seductive, mythological mirror-based installation that immerses you and reflects your body back in at least a dozen dimensions. The exhibition’s subtitle is from Walt Whitman’s poem, “I Sing the Body Electric,” in which “souls are reflected in nature,” from the Leaves of Grass compilation. Standing amongst those massive shiny cyborg gods it was impossible to forget my own physicality, which felt sublime in MCA’s Large Works Gallery.
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