Past Exhibitions

July 19–August 25, 2019

Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art presents Pastime / Past Time, an interactive pop-up exhibition where visitors are invited to step back in time. Play architect by creating a structure with Lincoln Logs®, originally designed by John Lloyd Wright, son of famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright, while sitting at an original table and chairs all designed by husband and wife team Charles (1907–1978) and Ray Eames (1912–1988). The exhibition also includes midcentury modern clocks by Irving Harper and George Nelson & Associates, suggesting “past time.” Inspired by the Denver Art Museum’s summer exhibition, Serious Play: Design in Midcentury America, this pop-up exhibition at Kirkland Museum connects visitors to playful objects designed for the American home.

September 6, 2019–January 12, 2020

Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art and the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities present a collaborative exhibition titled Colorado Abstract +10: A History & A Survey at both locations to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the stunning book, Colorado Abstract: Paintings and Sculpture. Originally published in 2009 by Fresco Books with a foreword by Hugh Grant, notable art writers Michael Paglia and Mary Voelz Chandler highlight the history and continuing tradition of abstraction by artists in the state. The exhibition, Colorado Abstract +10: A History & A Survey, will be split with Kirkland Museum displaying works from the historical section of the book and the Arvada Center displaying a contemporary survey of the work in the book as well as additional artists working in abstraction that have greatly impacted Colorado’s art scene.

March 22–July 14, 2019

Kirkland Museum is pleased to feature a retrospective of Barbara Locketz (1927–2017), whose artworks include oil paintings, prints, paper and metal collage, metal and acrylic sculpture, jewelry and textiles. She was a student of Vance Kirkland while completing her MA at the University of Denver and later taught there from 1964 to 1971. She exhibited her work throughout Colorado and the American Southwest, New York and Mexico.

January 25 - December 31, 2019

2019 marks 100 years since the opening of the Bauhaus school in Weimar, Germany. To mark this anniversary, Kirkland Museum is highlighting objects from our permanent collection created by designers who were once teachers or students at the famous art and design school, including Marcel Breuer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Marianne Brandt.  The collection includes work by eleven artists ...

August 24, 2018 - January 6, 2019

Co-curated by Hugh Grant, Founding Director, and Christopher Herron, Deputy Curator, with a catalog essay by Stan Cuba, Associate Consulting Curator Elizabeth Yanish Shwayder (b. 1922) has created hundreds of sculptures and executed a number of public art commissions in the Rocky Mountain region. She came to Colorado in 1945. Her sculptures have been shown widely in galleries in the ...

March 10 - June 17, 2018

Near and Far presents 86 total prints comprised of a selection of 62 images from among the more than 1,000 in Kirkland Museum’s extensive collection focusing on Colorado and surrounding states, together with 24 of the canonical printmakers assembled by prominent Denver art collector-patrons, Jan Mayer and her late husband, Frederick Mayer. As part of the Kirkland’s mission of showcasing ...

Through May 1, 2016

Curated by Hugh Grant New Explorations in International Design 1878–2000 highlights our international design collection, recognized as one of the most important displays in North America, from the last quarter of the 19th century through the 20th century. Major, new acquisitions are integrated into the Kirkland’s salon settings. Since the opening of Phase 1 on November 23, 2012, 76 extraordinary ...

Through May 1, 2016

Co-curated by Hugh Grant and Christopher Herron Kirkland Museum showcases the nationally important art history of Colorado. For this exhibition, the two main level exhibition rooms have been displayed with works from the 1870s to 2000s in a timeline from realism to pure abstraction. The exhibition draws from the museum’s unparalleled and still growing collection of over 6,000 works of art by ...