Evolution of the Denver Art Museum
"Autumn" by Harvey Otis Young
The Denver Artist’s Club and the Path to an Art Museum for Denver
In 1893, internationally trained fine artist, Emma Richardson Cherry, invited a group of Denver’s leading artists to her Denver studio with the purpose of creating a new art organization. Cherry felt the city was in need of an art group that would foster better public awareness of local and regional artists, and one that could educate the community about national and international art through exhibits and lectures. Cherry had studied painting in Paris as well as with leading American artists in Philadelphia, and New York. She had a deep understanding of national and international art movements, and wanted to share her knowledge with other artists and the greater Denver community.
Two years before, Cherry and Harriet Winslow Hayden had started an all-female Denver art group, the Le Brun Club, named after Madame Vige´e Lebrun, a french portraitist. The purpose of that organization was to seek better recognition and opportunities for Denver women artists. the Denver Artist’s Club, however, was to include both women and men, as well as those that appreciated art and could financially support their mission.
(Image: "Dull Day on the Cove" by Emma R Cherry)
The Denver Artist’s Club - Beginnings 
The purpose of the Denver Artist’s Club was “to cultivate and promote a general interest and promotion of the arts.” The first members of the DAC included both practicing artists and well-to-do art patrons and business leaders. Dues were $2 a year. Fine artist members had to be referred by three other members and then juried into the organization. Annual juried exhibitions were held each Spring. Early female members included painters Elisabeth Spalding, Henrietta Bromwell, Harriet Winslow Hayden, Anne Evans, Marion Hendrie and sculptress, Elsie Ward. Early male members included painters, Charles Partridge Adams, Harvey Otis Young and Henry Reed, as well as Denver Public Schools Art Class Superintendant, Charles Carter and DPS art teacher, John Henderson.
(Image: Landscape by Harriet Winslow)
The first DAC juried art exhibition was held in 1893 at the Kittridge Building and in 1894, at the University of Denver’s club room, located at 1330 Arapahoe Street. According to Elisabeth Spalding, their exhibits were held at “any store or place that came available.” When a new public library was built in Denver’s Civic Center, the DAC was able to stage their annual shows in the library gallery. Annual exhibitions featured important local artists, including DAC members Allen Tupper True, George Elbert Burr, and renowned American artists including William Merritt Chase, Arthur Davies, Robert Henri, Ernest Lawson, Robert Reid and J. Alden Weir. Several DAC artists had studied with these important artists and were close to them. The DAC also exhibited works from the Taos Society of painters, Japanese woodcuts and the Arts & Craft s movement.
A New Name
After several years, the Denver Artist’s Club expanded it’s activities beyond fundraisers and in-home salons, as well as curation of a variety of exhibitions. The club policy was to purchase one piece of art from each exhibition in order to create a permanent collection, which was displayed in a gallery at the Museum of Natural History in City Park. By 1917, DAC board members felt the club’s name was limiting and voted to change the name to the Denver Art Association. DAA opened it’s first semi-permanent gallery in a portion of the City and County Building in 1919. Around that time, the Chappell House, a 22 room mansion at 1300 Logan, was donated to the DAA to be used for administrative offices and to house permanent art collections.
(Image: "Autumn" by Harvey Otis Young)
Controversy
The Twenty-fifth Annual Exhibit of the Denver Art Association took place in 1919 and included controversial modernist works by Denver’s important modernist artist, John Thompson and his former students, Jozef Bakos and Walter Mruk, as well as works by Gustave Bauman, George Elbert Burr, Emma Richardson Cherry, William Penhallow Henderson, B.J.O. Norfeldt, Robert Reid, Henry Richter and Elisabeth Spalding. The show was dubbed the “Denver Armory Show” because it featured many works influenced by modern European art, including abstraction, fauvism, and cubism. It was not received well by the press and was dubbed “Bolshevism in Art” by the Rocky Mountain News. (April 17, 1919)
(Image: "Pines, Indian Creek Park" by Elizabeth Spalding)
The Birth of the Denver Art Museum
In 1923, the Denver Art Association was officially renamed the Denver Art Museum, and showed its permanent collections at the Chappell House. DAM member, artist and civic volunteer, Anne Evans, donated her collection of Native American basketry, pottery and weaving to the DAM as well as her collection of New Mexican Santos. Other local benefactors were of immense importance and added to the museum’s growth. 
In 1948, the DAM purchased and renovated a building on 14th and Acoma, across from the Civic Center that became the Schleier Memorial Gallery. A new wing of that building soon followed. In 1971, the DAM constructed the seven story Gio Ponti building addition. In 2006, Architect Daniel Libeskind created the Hamilton Building addition, and in 2021, the Martin Building and Sie Welcome Center opened to the public
Summary
The citizens of Denver are fortunate that the determined actions of a few forward-thinking artists helped establish the DAC—a club that was at the forefront of promoting the arts in Colorado and evolved over 30 years into the Denver Art Museum. Regarding the creation of the Denver Art Museum, Elisabeth Spalding wrote in a 1923 paper delivered to the Denver Fortnightly Club, “ The big thing now is for the public to want it all and to vote for it and to support it. Art, the expression, satisfying and abiding, of the zest of life, art, what is it? We can all find out!”
(Image: "Longs Peak" by Charles Partridge Adams")
- Article by Betsy Johnson Welty
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