A Behind the Scenes Look at Curating Portrayal: Figurative Art from the Madden and University Art Collections
By Megan Adams, Exhibition Project Manager and Collections Coordinator
As a graduate student in Art History and Museum Studies at the University of Denver I am grateful for the coursework and professional development opportunities that have been available to me throughout my time at DU that have equipped me for a future curatorial career. Amid the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic, myself and seven other undergraduate and graduate students, embarked on the new adventure of navigating a traditionally hands-on, interactive Curatorial Practicum course at the Madden Museum of Art taught by Madden Museum Program Director Nicole Parks during winter quarter 2021.
Photograph of the Madden Museum of Art at Palazzo Verdi in Greenwood Village, CO.
Despite masking and social distancing, we were able to hold the Curatorial Practicum course at the Madden Museum of Art and find new ways to connect, innovate, and collaborate on curating a new exhibition of artwork drawn from the Madden collection and the University of Denver Art collections.
The process began when the eight of us took our seats at the museum in January. Nicole posed to a us the idea of curating a portraiture show. Taking the idea and running with it, we each conducted a deep dive into the available artworks from the Madden and University Art Collections and brainstormed a variety of ways in which portraiture could be interpreted using the artworks we found. For me personally, as an art historian, community scholar, and curator I am passionate studying how the natural world is articulated in art throughout time. In my investigation of available artworks from the Madden and University collections, I began broadly compiling interesting works of portraiture and through the process realized the most interesting works to me were those where figures were shown in environmental settings. I selected a range of traditional and contemporary artwork addressing this theme that inspired my development of a prolonged interested in the element of setting in portraiture. Some of the works I selected from the University Art Collections included George W. Platt’s Reclining Nude, Salvador Dalí’s Flowering Inspiration, Aflred Guillou’s Fischer girl mending a net, and four black and white photographs by photographer Lucien Clergue including Nude in Yosemite National Park, California. From the Madden collection I was drawn to artworks including Charles Courtney Curran’s After the Storm and Aldo Severi’s Madam Y.
Next in the curatorial process, we paired off into four groups of two, each tasked with curating a section of the portraiture show that offered a different take on the genre of portraiture. Through careful deliberation and brainstorming my partner Nicole and I decided to develop my initial idea of addressing the element of setting in portraiture and figurative artwork through a deep dive into different manifestations of human-environmental relations in a selection of artworks from the Madden and University art collections. Our next step was to expand the list of available artworks on our chosen theme. In constructing a narrative for our section, we generated an important list of desired take-away messages for visitors, our primary hope being that our section would prompt visitors to consider how they may understand or define themselves in relation to the natural world. Our finalized section title became Unearthing the Relational Self: Occupying to Embodying the Natural World and we decided our section would explore the different relationships between female figures and the environment in portraiture. Once we had a broader list of artworks to make selections from and a more concrete idea of our section narrative, we were able to parse out engaging pairings of art that focused on different kinds of relationships between the natural world and human figures. These pairings informed our decision to develop our section around the four subthemes of “Working: Environment as Resource,” “Contemplating: Environment as Wonder,” “Posing: Environment as Backdrop,” and “Embodying: Environment as Extension of Self.” To challenge the anthropocentrism of the genre of portraiture, these themes equally prioritize the roles of the environment and that of the female figure in the artworks presented. In articulating the designated role of the environment in relation to the role of the human figure, this section hopes to highlight the importance of the natural world in human identity formation.
Our section was slated to occupy two different spaces in the Madden Museum, most of the works were to be hung on s-wall, a small number were to be hung on one side of the triangle wall, and one shared work to be hung on the back of the floating wall near the back of the museum.
Image of the original Google Sketchup layout for “Unearthing the Relational Self” at the Madden Museum of Art.
Artworks to be included in Unearthing the Relational Self totaled fourteen works. A lot of thought went into curating the section’s layout and design. We had to consider sight lines, groupings of artworks based on our chosen subthemes, and the transitions between our section and the sections whose artworks abutted ours. In spatially organizing our section we were faced with the interesting challenge of integrating Madden collection works that were large in scale with the University art collection works we had selected that happened to be smaller in scale. For example, in the subsection “Contemplating: Environment as Wonder,” a large Madden work After the Storm is paired with a small, intimate University art collection work Reclining Nude.
VMG Google Sketchup image showing the pairing of Curran’s After the Storm and Platt’s Reclining Nude and the chosen display method for the Platt painting.
Mimicking the pensive female figures in the two works, we decided to engage museum visitors experientially with the concept of connecting body and mind in contemplation of the natural world by displaying George Platt’s Reclining Nude on a pedestal instead of installing it on the wall. Positioning the small oil painting on a pedestal allows visitors to safely view the painting from a close distance and absorb the detailed depiction of the reclining female figure observing a butterfly perched on a branch.
Throughout the course student curators balanced developing our sections with executing the larger tasks associated with the development of the exhibition from exhibit design, PR and marketing, graphic design, programming, collections care, and fabrication needs. Working together on larger tasks associated with the exhibition helped us as a group bring our four different sections together into a cohesive exhibition. Through hard work and collaboration, we curated a portraiture exhibition titled Portrayal: Figurative Art in the Madden and University Art Collections. The exhibition explores portraiture expressed in various styles of art through a close examination of different relationships between figures and forms in the artwork presented. Relationships between figures and forms are analyzed from the perspectives of the natural world, identity, legacy, and what is means to consider the (in)complete. The section Unearthing the Relational Self: Occupying & Embodying the Natural World takes a close look at interactions between female figures and the environment in portraiture to highlight the crucial role the natural world plays in our identity formation by helping us understand our place in and connection to the world around us. Depicting Legacy: Private vs Public Lives investigates the concept of legacy as it is articulated in portraiture that captures larger than life public personas and more intimate and private portrayals of individuals. Considering the (In)Complete addresses artistic process and the artistic progression towards a more varied definition of what constitutes a “finished” work of art with the advent of new artistic technologies and a move against the historic aspiration toward polished naturalism. And finally, Expressions of Identity: Personality in Portraiture considers how elements of portraiture are used to facilitate a dialog between sitter and viewer to convey the sitter’s personality and by extension important tenants of their individual identity.
Unfortunately, during the course in February 2021 and again this summer in July the Madden Museum of Art experienced climate emergencies. Heavy rainfall caused floods of the museum space.
Photograph of Madden staff member Savannah Kirksey directing volunteers in flood triage work at the Madden Museum of Art in July 2021.
In the face of the challenges presented by the climate emergency, student curators, Nicole Parks, and Madden Museum staff responded with optimism and resolve to realize Portrayal. Luckily, the Madden Museum is one of two University of Denver exhibition spaces. The Vicki Myhren Gallery located on the DU campus made the generous offer to host Portrayal at the gallery during the fall 2021 quarter.
Photograph of the Vicki Myhren Gallery at the University of Denver.
In August we made a quick start of altering our exhibition plan for the Madden Museum to meet the new spacial requirements of the VMG. Some important adaptations that we made include creating a new exhibition timeline, reducing the number of included artworks, adjusting the layout and exhibition design, and reworking exhibition text and labels.
Unearthing the Relational Self went from fourteen artworks to eleven. I had to adapt our overall narrative by removing the subsection text panels and integrating the different thematic concepts that make up the section into extended labels. We removed the black and white Lucien Clergue photographs from the exhibition that made up the subsection “Embodying: Environment as Extension of Self” but were able to preserve the contemporary iteration of our theme by including Dalí’s Flowering Inspiration on our feature wall next to Saussurea II by Hung Liu.
Image of VMG Google Sketchup Layout showing the pairing of Flowering Inspiration by Salvador Dalí and Saussurea II by Hung Lui.
Although not originally envisioned, this pairing prompts consideration of how natural elements are integrated into contemporary portraits as symbols of the sitter’s identification with the natural world. The overall layout of the section was adapted to fit the unique configuration of the Vicki Myhren Gallery.
The unexpected circumstances that led to our sudden change of venue helped me cultivate my ability as a curator to adapt in the face of new challenges.
The experience has been an informative exercise in creative problem solving and it is exciting to be able to introduce the Madden collection to a new audience at the VMG and engage students, faculty, and staff at the University of Denver with new perspectives on the genre of portraiture in art in an accessible space near their places of work and study. Portrayal encourages visitors to reflect, connect, and consider their place within the world through an exploration of portraiture. In a year of tough circumstances for the Madden Museum of Art with the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate emergencies, Portrayal offers a timely consideration of how human beings persist, overcome adversity, and find regeneration.