The Family of Street Acrobats: the Injured Child (La Famille Du Saltimbanque: L'enfant Blessãƒâ©)

At first, approaching from some blocks away, I didn't realize this was one of the main buildings of the Denver Art Museum, which I visited on the afternoon of September 9.
I spent some time looking at information technology, though, considering it isn't like anything else in the area. I had a thought that shows my historic period: crumpled punch card.

If I ever asked my daughters, or ane of their contemporaries, what's a punch carte du jour? the reply I would surely go is, I don't know. Just I remember seeing them as belatedly as the early '80s. Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.

The edifice, known as the museum'south North Building, is from the age of punch cards, completed in 1971 and ane of the terminal works of builder Gio Ponti. Modernist Ponti'southward piece of work is otherwise unrepresented in North America and, having never been to Milan (or made whatever systematic written report of the built environment), I had but a meager notion of his work.

In that location'due south a helpful exhibit in the museum most the early history of the organization and the construction of the North Edifice, and then the evolution of the much newer Hamilton Building, completed simply in 2006. That edifice is and then horizontal that an epitome was hard to capture in one go, unless you lot stride dorsum further than I cared to.

If the North Building is Modernist, the Hamilton is Postmodernist? I suppose. Odd geometry for the sake of odd geometry by starchitect Daniel Libeskind. Interesting to look at, certainly. Like the Ascent at Roebling'southward Bridge in greater Cincinnati, unfinished the last time I was in that town.

As whatsoever art museum of whatever size should — and information technology'southward credited with being the largest art museum betwixt Chicago and the West Coast — DAM has a wealth of works on brandish, and no dubiety a sizable inventory in storage. Too much for whatever ane visit: European and American fine art of before centuries, Asian works, Pre-Columbian items and a Spanish Colonial collection, modernistic African and Oceanic pieces, photography, textiles and more.

I'd read that one of DAM's specialties was American Indian art, and and then information technology is. Like the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis, the collection includes Indian art and artifacts of historic involvement, but also artwork by 20th- and 21st-century Native Americans.

I spent a fairly long time in these galleries, outset with earlier items, such as this room, which naturally reminded me of the the Academy of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology.

Except for this piece of work, "Coating Story: Confluence, Heirloom, and Tenth Mount Division" by Marie Watt, 2013.

Which is equanimous of a very tall stack of blankets, "donated mostly by members of the local community," said the plaque, which I take to mean the Seneca, since Watt belongs to that tribe. I asked a docent how the stack was held up; she said the artist and the curator probably knew, but she didn't. There was no visible means of support.

Some other room sports various vessels, in this case the works of Zia artists in New United mexican states.
Moving frontward in fourth dimension, "Sacro-Wi" by Oscar Howe, 1967.
He sounded familiar. Turns out he'southward the aforementioned creative person who did the interior murals at the Corn Palace in Mitchell, Due south Dakota.

Closer to our time, some parody: "American Spirit," by David P. Bradley, 2004-05.

And "State O Bucks, Land O Fakes, Land O Lakes," by the same artist, 2006. Reminded me very much of Wacky Packages, which were all the rage when I was in junior high.
As interesting as the works were, American Indian art was inappreciably the full extent of DAM. I also spent a while looking at European art from earlier centuries.
Note the chairs. The older I get, the more than I appreciate museums with seating with backs.

A detail from a striking painting in that room, "La Famille du Saltimbanque: L'Enfant Blessé (The Family unit of Street Acrobats: The Injured Child)," past Gustave Doré, ca. 1873.

Ane of the other things he did was wood-engraved illustrations for "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner."

And at present for something completely different: a item from "Thomas Sheppard," by Andrea Soldi, 1773.
Something fifty-fifty more different: a Chinese bamboo carving.
By that time I saw that I'd wandered off into a gallery dedicated to a collection of East Asian bamboo carvings of considerable diversity and virtuosity. I must have seen such things while in Eastern asia, simply time passes, and you forget.

Among other things, writings well-nigh bamboo were as well posted in the room. Such as a verse form attributed to Su Shi, a Chinese poet, calligrapher and gastronome (1037-1101) of the Song dynasty, translated past Jan Walls. (How come I don't remember this statue of Su Shi near the Westward Lake? I must have seen it.)

At a Reclusive Monk's Greenish Bamboo Studio

I would rather eat a meal without meat
than live in a place without bamboo.
Eating without meat makes yous lose weight,
only living without bamboo makes you lose refinement.
When a person loses weight, information technology may exist regained,
just when scholars lose refinement they are untreatable.
Others will find these words funny,
seeming lofty and at the same time, crazy.
Ruminate on this carefully if you are wise,
or you volition never ride a crane to Paradise.

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Source: http://www.dees-stribling.com/2017/09/20/the-denver-art-museum/

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