University Art Collections

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History

The University of Denver, founded in 1864, first offered instruction in the visual arts in 1865. DU consistently offered both art and art history classes for the three decades starting in the late 1880s, and resumed instruction in 1929. The University’s earliest surviving art acquisitions date from this period: our plaster cast of the Venus de Milo (ca. 1893) and a late landscape by Albert Bierstadt, which was a gift from the artist in 1890.

There was no formal program for care and use of DU’s art holdings until 2005, when the University hired its first curator for the University Art Collections. By the time founding curator Dan Jacobs announced his retirement in 2018, over 3600 art objects had been catalogued; those not on view on campus have been rehoused in a new, professionally managed off-campus facility, the Hampden Art Study Center. Access for students, faculty, and researchers is a major priority that led to the creation of a fully searchable online database, which we made available in 2010.

The art collections continue to grow primarily through gifts by alumni and friends of the University. Recent acquisitions include gifts of works by Andy Warhol, Jim Dine, and Vito Acconci; a significant collection of 19th-century English watercolors; a sizable archive of Soviet photojournalism; and a host of works by important regional artists, many of them affiliated with the University. In 2016, Greenwood Village developer John Madden, Jr. announced a transformative gift of The Madden Collection, with artworks valued at $10 million. The 135 works include pieces by major 19th-century Italian masters, as well as American masters Thomas Moran, Albert Bierstadt, Jasper Francis Cropsey, Robert Rauschenberg, and Viola Frey.

Please email us at artcollections@du.edu with questions or if you have any information about the objects in our collections.

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Art Donations