marvelous mud
Marvelous Mud: Clay Around the World includes eight exhibitions, live artist demonstrations, and hands-on programming.
For details on individual exhibitions, see listings below. Special offers are available through our community partners.
July 17 is Access Day at the Denver Art Museum. The Denver Art Museum welcomes visitors with disabilities and their families to a multisensory experience of our summer blockbuster exhibition, Marvelous Mud.
Unless otherwise indicated, exhibitions are included with general museum admission.
HANDS-ON ACTIVITIES
The Mud Studio
Kids of all ages (even grown-up ones) can get their hands dirty, work with clay, watch live demonstrations on the weekends, and learn about the marvelously messy world of ceramics.
Outdoor CLAYground
Join us on weekends in July to help build an outdoor clay playground. Visitors can help place straw bales, mix clay and straw, and plaster the CLAYground with adobe.
Fun for Families
You'll find fun stuff for families throughout the museum. Pick up a Family Backpack filled with games, puzzles, and artmaking activities. Stop at a Hotspot to paint a Hopi tile. Try your hand at clay animation. And more.
Live Artists Demonstrations
On weekends throughout the summer, clay artists will demonstrate their skill working in clay.
Robin Furuta: Potter's Wheel
June 11–12 & June 18–19
Christy Hengst: Silk-screen on Porcelain
June 25–26
Crow Medina & Grams Castro: Traditional American Indian Hand-building & Painting
July 2–3
Peter Durst: Hand-built Ceramic Arch
July 9–10
José Antonio Mateos Suárez & Fernando Jimon Melchor: Tonalá Painting Techniques
July 16–17
Robyn Gray: Silkscreen, Assembly
July 23–24
Gayla Lemke: Large-scale Hand-building & Carving
July 30–31 & August 6–7
Janey Skeer: Hand-building & Clay Stamps
August 13–14 & August 20–21
Bob Smith: Potter's Wheel
August 27–28
Shelley Schreiber: Wheel-thrown, Assembled & Hand-built Porcelain
September 3–4
Maynard Tischler: Hand-building & Molds
September 10–11 & September 17–18
EXHIBITS
Marajó:
Ancient Ceramics at the
Mouth of the Amazon
Delve into the elaborately decorated earthenware ceramics from the people who occupied the Brazilian island of Marajó from A.D. 400-1300.
Overthrown:
Clay Without Limits
Artists push the boundaries of clay to create large-scale installations that respond to the musuem's dynamic architecture.
Blue & White:
A Ceramic Journey
Explore the popularity of blue-and-white ceramics in different parts of the world and throughout the centuries, from early China to present day.
Dirty Pictures
Whether as the substance of metaphor or as a mark of human interaction with the earth, see the varied ways photographers have depicted mud, clay, dirt, and soil.
Mud to Masterpiece:
Mexican Colonial Ceramics
Explore the era of global trade and its effect on traditional Mexican earthenware, Chinese porcelain, and Mexican majolica through more than 30 pieces of work.
Focus: Earth & Fire
There's more to Marvelous Mud than ceramics. Celebrate the myriad artistic responses to nature and its elements, including mountains, earthquakes, volcanoes, and forest fires.
Nampeyo:
Excellence by Name
Nampeyo was the first American Indian woman to gain personal recognition for her pottery. Trace the full spectrum of her artistic career and the work of successive generations of her family.
Potters of Precision:
The Coors Porcelain Company
Investigate porcelain labware in which beauty and fucntion exist simultaneously in vessels that serve scientists' precisely stated needs.
© 2011 Denver Art Museum
