Monet paints his way to Denver

A can’t miss exhibit for students

The Denver Art Museum (DAM) announced on July 23 that their upcoming landmark exhibition for next year will feature work from Claude Monet. According to the official announcement, “The exhibition will feature more than 100 paintings spanning Monet’s entire career and will focus on the celebrated French impressionist artist’s enduring relationship with nature and his response to the varied and distinct places in which he worked.”

Claude Monet: The Truth of Nature will be on display from Oct. 20, 2019 to Feb. 2, 2020. The Denver Art Museum will be the only U.S. stop for the comprehensive exhibition.

One Denver local and CU Denver film major, Rachel Schwabauer, is especially enthusiastic about the exhibit. “Monet is one of my favorite artists, and his work with Impressionism is extremely important to the evolution and history of art,” Schwabauer said. “Being able to see his work up close is an amazing experience. Impressionism is one of those art styles that means so much more in person, being able to step up close to see each individual paint stroke, and then being able to step back to see the whole picture. Denver is a growing city, and to have it be one of the only places chosen to showcase Monet’s artwork is very monumental.”

Currently, DAM houses only six paintings from Monet as compared to museums in much larger metropolitan areas like New York that have 40+ works in their possession.

“Although our city’s museums are strong, a comparison with selected urban centers would generally show that Denver’s collections have relatively limited holdings in European painting,” Jeffrey Schrader, an art history professor at CU Denver, said. “Speaking in comparative terms, museums in the Mountain Time Zone often do not have deep collections of European paintings. The Monet exhibition of 2019-2020 will have a significant impact in Colorado by introducing a range of highly admired works not typically available to the public here. It will be an exceptional experience for CU Denver students to have this exhibition a short walk from campus.”

It is also believed that the exhibit will be widely admired by Coloradans because it captures the spirit of Colorado itself.

“As a painter, Monet formulated a modern style with a measure of independence from historical precedents,” Schrader said. “In doing so, he sought to attain visual realism—hence, the truth of nature in the exhibition’s title. That forward-looking character will likely earn admiration in Colorado, which became a state just as Impressionism was gaining momentum in Europe.”

Group tickets for the exhibit will go on sale on Dec. 17, 2018, and single tickets will be announced later.