Shared Experiences

The Denver Art Museum’s PIWAA Symposium returns to explore themes of colonialism in a March exhibition.

Returning as an in-person event is the Denver Art Museum’s 17th annual Petrie Institute of Western American Art Symposium, this year titled Near East to Far West: A Closer Look. The symposium tackles major themes surrounding the upcoming museum exhibition Near East to Far West: Fictions of French and American Colonialism, opening March 5 and featuring 80 astonishing works of art that encourages visitors to compare the visual and historical aspects of French Orientalism and artworks of the American West.Ernest L. Blumenschein, Church at Ranchos de Taos, 1916, oil on canvas, 45½ x 47½.” Courtesy of American Museum of Western Art - The Anschutz Collection. Photograph by William J. O’Connor.

JR (Jennifer R.) Henneman, director and curator of the Petrie Institute of Western American Art, explains that a primary goal of the institute is to “reinsert Western American art into its cosmopolitan and international contexts of creation. Near East to Far West does just that by exploring the many ways that the style and substance of French Orientalism directly influenced American artists and their representations of the American West in art and popular culture from 1830 to 1930.”Fernand Lungren, In the Abyss: Grand Canyon, ca. 1896, oil on canvas, 60¼ x 40.” The Art, Design & Architecture Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara: Fernand Lungren Bequest, 1964.659.

Henneman explains in greater detail that the “French Orientalism refers to art made by French artists in response to and inspired by the Islamic world of the greater Mediterranean basin. Interest in these subjects increased as France colonized Algeria starting in the 1830s. At the same time, the United States ventured further westward on its own campaign to incorporate what is now known as the American West. As both countries expanded, their artists often utilized a shared visual language—shared motifs and styles—that helped represent their perspectives about what was to them, unknown exotic lands.”

The symposium will feature four distinguished speakers who will dive even deeper into the topic by discussing vital themes like the development of French Orientalism during the early days of French colonization of Algeria; World’s Fairs as disseminators of Orientalizing imagery and the performances and agency of Indigenous communities within these spaces; and questions of representation and impacts of Indigenous communities into the present.Alphonse-Étienne Dinet, Man in a Large Hat (Homme au Grand Chapeau), 1901, oil on canvas, 15¼ x 10½.” Musée d’Orsay and Cité nationale de l’histoire et de l’immigration, Paris: MAAO 9720, LUX 527. © RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY. Photograph by Daniel Arnaudet.

Henneman notes that while the exhibition and symposium present opportunities to celebrate exquisite technique, beautiful artworks and human curiosity, “they are also venues for exercising self-reflection and thinking beyond the frame: about the colonial contexts in which these artworks were produced, and of the legacies of these representations into the present,” she says. “The exhibition prompts visitors to consider what we bring to these artworks now. How have their meanings changed over time, if at all? What expectations or biases might we have inherited, and how might considering this art historical story change or modify what we think we know about the world, or what we think an artwork can tell us about it?”Exterior view of the Denver Art Museum, host of the PIWAA Symposium.Highlights in the exhibition and fueling the discussion of the Symposium, include Fernand Lungren’s In the Abyss: Grand Canyon, featuring a Native American figure perched on the edge of the Grand Canyon, overlooking the winding Colorado River; Alphonse-Étienne Dinet’s Man in a Large Hat (Homme au Grand Chapeau), a portrait of a North African man; and Ernest L. Blumenschein’s Church at Ranchos de Taos depicting Native American figures on horseback, with a large pueblo dwelling and clouded sky in the background.

The symposium will take place January 27, with both an in-person and virtual format. Tickets can be found at www.denverartmuseum.org/westernsymposium. —

Near East to Far West: A Closer Look
January 27, 2023
Denver Art Museum
Sharp Auditorium, 100 W. 14th Avenue Parkway, Denver, CO 80204
(702) 865-5000, www.denverartmuseum.org