The Denver Art Museum has opened a new photography exhibition titled "What We've Been Up To: Landscape," featuring works acquired over the past 17 years that have never been publicly displayed before. The show, curated by the museum's photography department (established in 2008), includes a range of landscape photographs from historic images by Ansel Adams, Marion Post Wolcott, and William Henry Jackson to contemporary works by artists such as Abelardo Morell, Meghann Riepenhoff, and Steve Fitch. The exhibition occupies a few rooms on the sixth floor of the Martin Building and highlights the museum's recent acquisitions in photography.
This exhibition matters because it offers rare public access to works that typically remain in storage—museums display only 3-5% of their holdings at any time. It reveals the evolving tastes and collecting priorities of the Denver Art Museum's photography curators, who have worked with limited resources to build a distinctive collection. The show also reflects broader debates about what constitutes a museum-worthy photograph today, from traditional nature scenes to experimental processes and documentary images that capture human impact on landscapes.