{"id":276519,"date":"2026-02-10T07:35:18","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T07:35:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/276519\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T07:35:18","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T07:35:18","slug":"denver-art-museum-unveils-unseen-portraits-in-new-exhibition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/276519\/","title":{"rendered":"Denver Art Museum Unveils Unseen Portraits in New Exhibition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thousands of photographs are quietly stored at the Denver Art Museum<\/a>, carefully catalogued, preserved and, most of the time, unseen. For Eric Paddock, the museum\u2019s curator of photography, that quiet has become impossible to ignore.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the frustrations is that you have all this stuff, and you can\u2019t always share it with the public,\u201d he says. \u201cWe do a lot of exhibitions. We do two exhibitions a year; sometimes we\u2019ve done as many as three or four. But often those are things that we borrow from other artists or from galleries or other museums. So I just thought it was time to start getting out some of the stuff that we\u2019ve been collecting.\u201d<\/p>\n

That impulse became a series. Last year, the museum debuted What We\u2019ve Been Up To: Landscape<\/a>. This weekend, the follow-up opens on level six of the Martin Building: What We\u2019ve Been Up To: People<\/a>, on view February 8 through September 29. The exhibition gathers roughly \u201cfifty photographs plus this big group of 46 pictures that are in the display case back here\u201d from the museum\u2019s permanent collection that have never been displayed in its galleries before.<\/p>\n

The show is not organized around celebrity photographers or famous subjects. Instead, Paddock approached the collection photograph by photograph, asking what each image had to say about being human.<\/p>\n

\"\"Lois Conner, Tuba City, Arizona, 1992. Platinum-palladium print; 6 7\/8 x 16 3\/4 inches. Denver Art Museum: Gift of Kerstin
and Robert Adams. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe are looking for good stuff,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019ve approached each picture individually, and I wouldn\u2019t say that there\u2019s an overarching plan or philosophy, except to look really carefully and kind of gauge or read what these photographs, in this case, have to say about people and about the joys and the challenges of being human. I was going to say in today\u2019s world, but some of these pictures were made much earlier, so that doesn\u2019t necessarily float.\u201d<\/p>\n

The result is a gallery that moves between continents, centuries and contexts with surprising fluidity. A 1912 portrait made in New Orleans by E.J. Bellocq hangs in the same exhibition as contemporary self-portraits, candid street scenes, Polaroids of Andy Warhol and an Irving Penn image of The Grateful Dead and Big Brother and the Holding Company. Some works are by internationally known artists. Others are by photographers whose names have been lost to history.<\/p>\n

\u201cGeographically, it\u2019s kind of wide open,\u201d Paddock says. \u201cThere are pictures by photographers in California, Nebraska, Mexico, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Japan, Mexico and several that we don\u2019t know who made or where they were made.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Keisha Scarville, Untitled #17, from the series Mama\u2019s Clothes, 2017. Pigment print; 40 x 62 inches. Denver Art Museum: Funds from the Photography Acquisitions Alliance.<\/p>\n

Not every photograph even shows a person. One image by Japanese photographer Yoko Ikeda features only a scattering of pink slippers pointed in different directions. Paddock placed it alongside a sequence of images connected by a quiet visual joke about feet, absence and motion: a long-exposure crowd in St. Petersburg leaving shoes on the steps, a returning prisoner of war on crutches, a patient dancing with his feet cropped out of frame and a woman moving so quickly her leg fails to register on film.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t really expect anyone to put all that together,\u201d he admits. \u201cIt was just my little conceit, as we were figuring out what to include in the show.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, subtle themes emerge if visitors step back. A wall of children at play gives way to photographs related to food, then to contemplative portraits, then to self-portraits. In one, an artist wears a jacket and tie that match the wallpaper to blend in, creating a visual metaphor for isolation. A quiet Vanitas section nearby features images referencing mortality, such as a life mask, skulls unearthed from an unmarked grave, and corroded canisters of cremated remains from an abandoned hospital.<\/p>\n

\"\"Unknown photographer,
Untitled, Topeka, Kansas, 1924-30. Gelatin silver print; 4 x 2 3\/8 inches. Denver Art Museum: Funds from the
Photography Acquisitions Alliance.<\/p>\n

Courtesy of Denver Art Museum<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I would like people to do is I would like them to look at the individual photos,\u201d Paddock says. \u201cBut every once in a while, just step back and look at a wall segment.\u201d<\/p>\n

The emotional center of the exhibition, however, sits inside a long display case holding 46 small snapshots taken in Topeka, Kansas, between 1924 and 1930. The photographer is unknown. The subjects are Black hotel employees, photographed on a rooftop in their uniforms, then outside on the street and finally in neighborhood scenes with friends and family.<\/p>\n

Paddock acquired the images during the pandemic after spotting them in the back of an auction catalog. No one bid on them. He made an offer, rallied a small group of acquisition donors and brought the photographs to Denver in 2020. He\u2019s been waiting to show them ever since.<\/p>\n

\u201cHonestly, this might be the whole reason we\u2019re doing this show,\u201d Paddock says. \u201c\u2026I really wanted people to see these. I just think they\u2019re charming; they\u2019re fascinating. For me, they go straight to the heart in a way, and there\u2019s such innocence in some respects.\u201d<\/p>\n

In one frame, a man poses stiffly, unsure. In the next, another employee hams it up for the camera, pant cuffs rolled, leaning hard into the moment. In another, a woman appears to dance as the photographer\u2019s shadow cuts across the ground. There are hints of personalities, relationships and inside jokes, frozen in silver halide nearly a century ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cEach of these pictures, you look at the people and the way they pose and the way they look at the camera and the way they sort of manage their uniforms,\u201d Paddock says. \u201cThey\u2019re all just like these little hints at those people\u2019s personalities. And to me, each one of these people, as you look at the picture, becomes absolutely real and individual.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Paddock, the deeper lesson of the exhibition is something photography has taught him over decades of looking.<\/p>\n

\"\"Alexey Titarenko, Birch Trees, Lake near Ozerki Metro Station, St. Petersburg, from the series Time Standing Still, 1999. Gelatin silver print; 15 1\/4 x 15 1\/4 inches. Denver Art Museum: Gift of Phaedra Harbaugh, DDS and Boris Sepesi, MD in honor of Teresa Harbaugh.<\/p>\n

\u201cLooking at photographs, I kind of learned that people don\u2019t change that much,\u201d he says. \u201cEveryone kind of wants the same things. Everyone fears the same things and that\u2019s part of what it is to be human.\u201d<\/p>\n

The idea that we are all the same regardless of time, geography or circumstance is what unites the exhibition.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea is to show a lot of different kinds of people, different ages and different backgrounds and we\u2019ll talk about them individually,\u201d Paddock says. \u201cWe are doing this as a way of reminding ourselves and the world that we\u2019re all in this together.\u201d<\/p>\n

What We\u2019ve Been Up To: People is on view from Sunday, February 8, through Tuesday, September 29, at the Denver Art Museum, 100 West 14th Avenue. Parkway. Learn more at denveratmuseum.org<\/a>; the exhibition is included in general museum admission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thousands of photographs are quietly stored at the Denver Art Museum, carefully catalogued, preserved and, most of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276520,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[442,498,499,500,501,156,3685,111,139,69,254],"class_list":{"0":"post-276519","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-events","15":"tag-new-zealand","16":"tag-newzealand","17":"tag-nz","18":"tag-photos"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}