Curator Chat

We Ask Leading Museum Curators About What’s Going On In Their World

Angelica Daneo
Chief Curator
Denver Art Museum
100 W. 14th Avenue Parkway, Denver, CO 80204
www.denverartmuseum.org

What event (gallery show, museum exhibit, etc.) in the next few months are you looking forward to, and why?
I would really love to see Kehinde Wiley’s A Portrait of a Young Gentleman at The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in Southern California. This commissioned artwork debuted in October 2021 and is positioned across from Thomas Gainsborough’s The Blue Boy, (ca. 1770). As a curator of Old Masters, I love projects that make a point of showing how relevant the art of the past is to all of us, including artists, who live in the present. Creating a dialogue between contemporary artists and the masters who preceded them illustrates that art is a continuum and artists do not create in a vacuum.

What are you reading?
I’m reading a book by a British cook Nigel Slater, titled The Christmas Chronicles. I love cooking and I read full cookbooks for pleasure. I am especially attracted to a good story that accompanies the recipes. This writer shares his memories about winter, the traditions of his family and stories from his childhood and, as I read, I am transported to my own childhood and my family’s traditions.

Interesting exhibit, gallery opening or work of art you’ve seen recently?
Whistler to Cassatt: American Painters in France, which is open at the Denver Art Museum right now (until March 13, 2022)! I have been so excited about this exhibition, curated by DAM curator emeritus Timothy Standring, because the subject really interests me: the connections and relationships between American and European art and artists. The exchange of ideas, borrowing and reinterpreting of styles and techniques that we see in the artworks is particularly fascinating to me. There are a number of works by John Singer Sargent, including early drawings he executed while studying in Paris.

What are you researching at the moment?
Right now, I am researching Flemish art from the 15th to the 17th centuries for a very interesting project we will unveil at the DAM in the near future. This is a departure from Italian Renaissance art, which was the focus of my past projects connected to this period in art history, so I’m really enjoying exploring more the art created across the Alps.

What is your dream exhibit to curate? Or see someone else curate?
One topic that fascinates me and that stems from my early studies in university in Italy, is the art of Northern Italy during the Renaissance, and in particular, what is today the region of Lombardy. It was a fertile ground for the exchange of ideas and art, an important junction that connected people from all over Europe as well as other regions of Italy. Lombardy, thanks to a strategic location in the North of Italy, was at the crossroad of many artistic influences and the merging of styles and different techniques created a unique language, whose fortune and appeal lasted for a long time. —