Collection Highlights
Browse objects from the Architecture and Design department in our online collection.
Department Staff
Darrin Alfred, Curator of Architecture and Design
Darrin Alfred's curatorial projects at the Denver Art Museum include The Psychedelic Experience: Rock Posters from the San Francisco Bay Area, 1965-71; Pattern Play: The Contemporary Designs of Jacqueline Groag, and Potters of Precision: The Coors Porcelain Company, among others. More recently, he co-organized the exhibition, Serious Play: Design in Midcentury America, in conjunction with the Milwaukee Art Museum.
Alfred previously held curatorial positions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Heinz Architectural Center at the Carnegie Museum of Art. He has published essays on the design practices of Fernando and Humberto Campana, AG Fronzoni, Ali Tayar, and Bjorn Wiinblad, among others. He holds a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Colorado Denver and a bachelor’s degree in Architectural Studies from the University of Pittsburgh.
Kit Bernal, Curatorial Assistant
Kit Bernal is the Curatorial Assistant for the Architecture and Design department. While she joined the department in August of 2022, Kit has been at the Denver Art Museum since September of 2021, previously working as Sales & Services Lead. Prior to the DAM, she held curatorial and research positions in multiple museums and collections, including curatorial intern at the Whitney Western Art Museum, research assistant for the University of Denver Art Collections, and Madden Fellow at the Madden Museum of Art. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a concentration in photography from Cornish College of the Arts and a master's in art history with a concentration in museum studies from the University of Denver. Her research largely focuses on the interactions between images, objects, and spaces, especially in photography, design, and material culture.
Holly Harmon, Interpretive Specialist
Holly Harmon is the Interpretive Specialist for Architecture and Design. Before joining the Denver Art Museum in 2022, Holly worked at the intersection of interpretation and education at the Jewish Museum, New Museum, Brooklyn Museum, and Detroit Institute of Arts; in all positions she served as a vocal visitor advocate with the goal of developing accessible and engaging museum experiences for diverse audiences. Holly has also educated visitors at various museums in Washington, DC including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art. She received her bachelor’s from Millsaps College in Jackson, MS, and her master’s in Art History from Syracuse University.
Department History
The Denver Art Museum has collected architecture and design since its earliest years. In the early twentieth century, at the first Artists’ Club annual exhibitions, furniture and decorative arts were displayed alongside painting and sculpture. In the 1920s, visitors to Chappell House and the Carnegie Library galleries—spaces the museum used before it had a permanent home—saw exhibitions featuring early American furniture, colonial silver, and architectural drawings. By 1930, museum director Cyril Kay-Scott, recognizing the value of such works, stressed the need to acquire not only traditional art media such as painting and sculpture, but also what was then characterized as applied art: objects designed with both aesthetics and function in mind.
In a defining moment for the collection, in 1990, director Lewis I. Sharp officially founded the department of Architecture, Design and Graphics, naming R. Craig Miller its first curator. Recognizing that Denver was a relatively new urban center in the American West, Miller made a major commitment to collecting objects from the post–World War II era, and, in particular, contemporary design.
Miller established clear, ambitious collecting goals in an area in which few American museums were actively involved. He launched an energetic acquisition program that encompassed a broad range of design, including architecture, furniture, industrial and product design, graphic design, and "functional" craft. Masterworks: Italian Design, 1960-1994 (1994) was the first comprehensive exhibition of contemporary Italian design in the United States in two decades, and was the first major exhibition organized by Miller for the new department. U.S. Design 1975-2000 (2002) was the culmination of Miller’s five year effort and one of the first by an American museum to demonstrate the United States’ contribution to international design during the last quarter of the twentieth century.
When Miller departed in 2007, Darrin Alfred arrived, bringing with him broad interests and a history of working with architecture and design collections. Alfred has expanded the department’s commitment to collecting postwar American graphic design, in particular. The same year Alfred began, the department acquired the AIGA Design Archives, one of the largest and most comprehensive holdings of contemporary American communication design in the world. Alfred’s first curatorial project at the museum was The Psychedelic Experience: Rock Posters from the San Francisco Bay Area, 1965-71. This major exhibition showcased more than 250 experimental and visually stunning examples from the department’s newly acquired collection of posters promoting dance concerts and other "happenings" that were iconic symbols of the youth culture of the 1960s and 70s.
Most recently, Alfred has conceived and developed the museum’s new design galleries, nearly 10,000 square-feet of new and renovated space within the Martin Building’s original footprint. The inaugural installation will feature more than 400 objects spanning two exhibitions: By Design: Stories and Ideas Behind Objects and Gio Ponti: Designer of a Thousand Talents.
Publication History
Find a list of key publications below from the Architecture and Design department:
- Serious Play: Design in Midcentury America. Edited by Monica Obniski and Darrin Alfred; with essays by Darrin Alfred, Amy Auscherman, Steven Heller, Pat Kirkham, Alexandra Lange, and Monica Obniski. New Haven: Yale University Press in association with the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Denver Art Museum, 2018.
- European Design Since 1985: Shaping the New Century. R. Craig Miller, Penny Sparke, Catherine McDermott. London: Merrell in association with the Denver Art Museum and the Indianapolis Museum of Art, 2009.
- US Design 1975–2000. R. Craig Miller, Rosemarie Haag Bletter, et al. New York: Prestel Verlag in association with the Denver Art Museum, 2001.
- Masterworks: Italian Design, 1960–1994. R. Craig Miller. New York: American Federation of Arts, 1996.
Exhibition History
Recent exhibitions organized by the Architecture and Design department include:
AIGA Design Archives
Founded in 1914 as the American Institute of Graphic Arts, AIGA is now known simply as “AIGA, the professional association for design.” The AIGA Design Archives at the Denver Art Museum houses award-winning entries submitted to AIGA’s annual competitions from about 1980 to 2010. The collection represents the largest and most comprehensive holding of contemporary American communication design in the world with approximately 12,000 physical artifacts. These objects reflect evolving styles, sensibilities, and techniques, and represent many of the leading design firms and individual practitioners within the United States during this 30-year period.