As my recent review of the "European Design Since 1985" exhibition at the Indianapolis Art Museum indicated, it is exactly the kind of show serious museums should be doing. It's ambitious, it's rooted in scholarship, it's aesthetically interesting, and it's displayed well.
So it's more than a little curious that the Denver Art Museum, where the curator R. Craig Miller worked until late 2007, and where he had organized two previous, widely traveled design shows, is not taking this one. DAM built its $110 million Hamilton wing in part to allow it to exhibit more traveling shows. In the catalogue's forward, DAM director Lewis I. Sharpe and IMA director Maxwell Anderson call the show a collaboration and note that many people at both museums worked hard on it. MORE>>