John Edward Thompson: Colorado Modernist

Nov. 12, 2009–Jan. 17, 2010

Left; J.E. Thompson: Untitled (Forest Landscape), 1941. Watercolor on paper, 24 x 29 1/4 in. Collection of Megan and Jerad Harbaugh. Right: Untitled (Standing Female Nude Looking over Shoulder), 1929. Oil on board, 18 1/4 x 18 1/2 in. The Wadsworth Collection.

The first of three exhibitions curated this season by students in a museum studies class at DU’s School of Art & Art History (SAAH). John E. Thompson (b. 1882) was a pioneering artist who served on the DU faculty from 1929 to his death in 1945. This exhibition gathers together paintings, sketches, and drawings from DU’s permanent art collection as well as works from other regional collections, including those of the Harbaugh family and of Deborah and Warren Wadsworth.

It also highlights the ongoing restoration of an important mural by Thompson on the DU campus, rediscovered more than 70 years after it was painted over in 1931. His 350 square foot Shakespeare-themed mural in Margery Reed Hall, which was finished in 1929 and painted over in 1931, was largely forgotten until its rediscovery in 2007. It is now being restored with the participation of SAAH students enrolled in the pre-conservation Bachelor of Fine Arts program.

Thompson’s influence on Colorado art was felt soon after he moved to Denver in 1917. Modernist works by Thompson and his followers incited heated debates about modern art in the newspapers of the time after they were included in a 1919 exhibition at the Denver Public Library. In the early 1920s, Thompson became a founding faculty member of the Chappell House School. When DU acquired the School in 1929 Thompson, along with most of its faculty, transferred to the University’s School of Art (now SAAH). He remains one of Colorado’s best-known and most avidly collected painters.

JOHN EDWARD THOMPSON: COLORADO MODERNIST is curated by Sarah Mills, Kirsten Nicholas, and Molly Nuanes.

Please note that for most of the calendar year, the Gallery will be split into two adjoining exhibition spaces, listed here as North Gallery and South Gallery. Shows will be staggered with separate opening receptions for each space. (Gallery closed Dec. 19–Jan. 3)

OPENING RECEPTION JANUARY 7, 5 - 8 PM

Cliff Evans: Citizen. Three channel HD video installation

January 7 - February 21, 2010

Still from Citizen, 2009. Video capture. Courtesy of the artist.

Citizen, an HD video installation by Brooklyn-based media artist Cliff Evans, will be featured in the artist’s first solo exhibition in the Denver region.

Featured works are: Citizen: The Wolf and Nanny, a three-channel HD video projection, together with three other single channel works:
Citizen: Camping at Home; Untitled (sketch for a monument to J.G. Ballard#1); and Untitled (sketch for a monument to J.G. Ballard#2)

Cliff Evans creates multi-screen photo-animation spectaculars that incorporate humor and a critical eye to confront the mediated and constructed landscapes of fear and desire in contemporary American culture. Using recognizable images and personalities culled from the internet and projected throughout the gallery, Evans creates an immersive environment of rhythm, sound, and motion.

In a year-end review for ARTFORUM, Barbara London, Associate Curator at the Museum of Modern Art, included Evans’ The Road to Mount Weather as one of the Best Films of 2006. “With a pinch of Hieronymus Bosch and another of William S. Burroughs,” she wrote, “Evans’s three-channel video installation brilliantly portrays 21st century phobias in this up-to-the-minute version of purgatory.”

Cliff Evans is represented by Curator's Office, Washington, DC and Stephan Stoyanov Gallery, New York, NY.

Visit the artist's web site by clicking here.

MORE UPCOMING SHOWS:

SOUTH GALLERY: Contemporary Art from the Sarah and Jim Taylor Collection
Feb. 11–March 7, 2010
Opening reception: Thursday, Feb 11, 5–8pm

NORTH GALLERY: Faculty Collects
April 1–April 25, 2010
Opening reception: Thursday, April 1, 5–8pm

SOUTH GALLERY: American Master Watercolors from the Jan Perry Mayer Collection
April 1–April 25, 2010
Opening reception: Thursday, April 1, 5–8pm

2010 BFA Exhibition
May 13–June 5, 2010
Opening reception: Thursday, May 13, 5–8pm