

With increasing globalization and ever-easier travel and communication, a kind of universal contemporary visual language has emerged that cuts across cultures and nationalities.

But differences rooted in geography, history and tradition inevitably remain, and they can even be found inside the United States, distinguishing one region from another.

Because of New England’s proximity to the sea, maritime art has long been prevalent there. But it’s no surprise that such work is all but absent in interior regions such as the Midwest and Rocky Mountain West.

Likewise, Denver’s history and geography help explain why Western art has long been popular with collectors here and is a focus of one of the most prominent departments at the Denver Art Museum. We are a city of mountainscapes and captured cowboys. Much the same is true for Spanish colonial art. Because of the city’s relative proximity to Santa Fe and the historical circumstances that took the Spanish Empire as far north as Colorado, such work has had a strong presence in Denver.

But as Lewis Sharp, the Denver Art Museum’s former director, points out, such factors alone are not necessarily enough to push interest in one direction or another. Community taste is often shaped by a museum collection or influential collectors. Individuals shape popular tastes, and so ours can seem a little disconnected at times, too.

Even a strong dealer can play an important role. From 1983 through 1996, for example, the now-defunct Inkfish Gallery presented an exhibition of kinetic, abstract sculptures by the late George Rickey every three years or so, selling dozens of the pieces in the process.

“We have a far larger number of George Rickeys in our community than probably another city our size,” Sharp said.

Kyle MacMillan

More in Entertainment