DAM passes on critically acclaimed design exhibition

Which do you prefer? This?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8BFWR5jb3s]

or This?

Yardbirds, Doors, Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, 1967, Bonnie MacLean.

Moby Grape, Chambers Brothers, Winterland/Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, 1967, Wes Wilson.

Judith H. Dobrzynski takes the Denver Art Museum to task on her blog Real Clear Arts. She questions why the museum did not agree to host their former curator R. Craig Millers show “European Design Since 1985: Shaping the New Century.” An expansive exhibit she reviewed in the Wall Street Journal calling it “exactly the kind of show serious museums should be doing. Its ambitious, its rooted in scholarship, its aesthetically interesting, and its displayed well.”

Read her full post by clicking on the hyperlink below:

http://www.artsjournal.com/realcleararts/2009/04/denver-and-design.html

The exhibit is currently on display at the Indianapolis Museum of Art and will travel the High Museum in Atlanta and perhaps a venue in Europe. The Denver Art Museum claims to be a partner in presenting this show, but according to Miller: “The Denver museum did not view his show as a big draw.”

So what does the museum consider a big draw? Well, Instead of a 250 item design exhibit that looks forward to where design is going, Denver Art Museums new design curator Darrin Alfred has put together a show currently on display that looks backward:”The Psychedelic Experience, Rock Posters from the San Francisco Bay Area, 1965-71.”

Other temporary exhibits at DAM this year? Charles M. Russell through September 2009 and a show called “New and Noteworthy: The Hopkins Family Quilt in Context,” through December 31, 2009. Wow! How exciting! Im sure both of those will be “a big draw!”