The celebrated Colorado artist Vance Kirkland was a man of many dots.

And the Denver museum The Kirkland celebrates each one of them, as well as its robust collection of international decorative art and a wealth of artists affiliated with Colorado, including Artus Van Briggle, Chuck Parson, Collin Parson, Emilio Lobato, Sushe Felix and Tracy Felix, and Bill Burgess.

It quickly becomes apparent The Kirkland isn’t like other museums. As jazz quietly trickles from the speakers, and you begin to wander through the galleries, each featuring a different time period and artistic style, you might think the staff has graciously provided some nice seating around the paintings on the wall, perhaps for weary visitors or those who want to sit and gaze at the works for a spell.

But please don’t sit on the furniture. It’s all part of the decorative art collection, and paired with paintings and sculptures by Colorado artists in vignette-style settings. It’s almost like walking into a beautifully decorated home.

“I love it because it gives context to these objects,” said Emilio Lobato, an abstract painter and Colorado native who has at least five pieces in the museum’s collection.

“The typical museum presentation is a more minimal presentation of extraordinary objects, and the Kirkland is one of a few institutions that puts it in context,” he said. “You see relationships that overlap of materials, settings, decorative arts and furniture. It tells a more complete story. Few of us live in empty boxes with great lighting and a lot of space around objects we own. The Kirkland is more of a peek into the typical way people live and interact with objects.”

Museum founder Hugh Grant (not the actor), a close friend of Kirkland’s who inherited his estate upon his death, is responsible for the niche approach, reminiscent of the way Kirkland styled his own home, with the pairing of his paintings and his collection of decorative arts.

“It’s intimate,” said Kirkland’s assistant curator Becca Goodrum. “And because you feel like you’re walking into a home, it’s a little less intimidating and more accessible for people to experience art.”

“Hugh always says more is more and less is a bore,” she added. “You might see your grandma’s place setting, but then you see something next to it that you’ve never seen before and would never see anywhere else. It’s a nice mix of things that are easy to connect to and right next to something that might blow your mind.”

In the first gallery, visitors will meet the museum’s titular figurehead and his famous dot paintings, huge candy-colored pieces that joyfully leap across the walls.

Sometimes referred to as the “Father of Modern Colorado Painting,” Kirkland, who began his career as a watercolorist in Designed Realism before evolving into Surrealism, then Abstract Expressionism, eventually hit on what he’s most famous for: the oil and water dot paintings he began making in 1963 and up until his death in 1981 at 76.

“He always pushed himself to keep developing, keep changing, and pursuing new outlets,” said Christopher Herron, associate director of exhibitions and collections for The Kirkland. “I don’t think he rested long on one technique or style.”

Kirkland, one of the state’s most celebrated painters, was not only a spicy sort, who was once quoted in The Denver Post as saying, “If you don’t know art, shut up,” but also a creative force who never stopped making art.

“Even when he hit on something that was selling, that was popular to his collectors, he pivoted away from it,” said Kirkland’s assistant curator Becca Goodrum. “In galleries where he was showing, they said what are you doing? Don’t pivot, this is working. And he was like I’m bored. I’m moving on. Come with me or don’t. Art was not a commercial business; it was his life’s blood. And he was going to do it whether it sold or not.”

The Kirkland is a bespoke cultural institution, built to highlight 300 works by Kirkland, who altogether did about 1,100 paintings; 800 other Colorado artists, 200 of whom are still living, who might have taught or lived here for a time or studied in the state, did significant work here, or made work about Colorado; and an international decorative art collection, featuring works by famous artists, like Frank Lloyd Wright, Meret Oppenheim, Dale Chihuly and Charles and Ray Eames.

The museum merged with the Denver Art Museum in 2024 and they live adjacent to each other in the Golden Triangle Creative District. Admission to one scores admission to the other.

“Vance was a central figure in the Colorado arts scene. He left his legacy as a modern pioneer in Colorado. He was very renowned in his time,” said Christoph Heinrich, the Frederick and Jan Mayer Director of the DAM. “Beyond his own work, he was an influential art teacher in Denver. He had wonderful students who are now in the collection. And he championed women artists, which wasn’t the rule in the 1930s through the ’50s. It was something he felt strongly about.”

THE HEART

Deep inside The Kirkland beats the pulse of the museum – Kirkland’s original art studio, an entire building where he created most of his work and taught students for decades at the Kirkland School of Art.

Around 2014, when it was clear the original museum, which opened in 2003 at 1311 Pearl St., in the same location as Kirkland’s historic studio, had outgrown its location, a new spot was located a little over a mile away, at 1201 Bannock St.

But the move was tricky – they couldn’t leave behind Kirkland’s studio. So they dug up the historic brick building and drove it through the middle of the night to its new location, moving aside streetlights and skirting around the DAM bridge, before settling into its new home, where it was seamlessly attached to the museum building.

A short video of the big move plays on a loop outside Kirkland’s studio.

“That was pretty magical,” Heinrich said. “It was an event. A lot of people were cheering alongside.”

Two vignettes inside Kirkland’s studio pay homage to the way he would have set up his home, even though he never lived in the building. Everything on the walls is his, as well as some other pieces, including an Eames chair.

“It’s to show people that his art looks so good with decorative art and in a home,” Goodrum said. “His paintings stand on their own, but they look so good with everything else. They’re livable.”

Inside the studio exists the sweet nugget under the hard candy coating – Kirkland’s creative lair, where his ingenuity is palpable.

The dot painting he was working on when he died is perched on a nearby easel, while his first dot painting hangs on the west wall.

But most of the room is devoted to a large work table, on which rests one of his dot paintings, as well as brushes, dowels and baby food jars, like the ones he would have filled with oil and paint. And the scene wouldn’t be complete without a jar of Crayola-colored jellybeans, one of his favorite treats. Above the table hang the straps the 5-foot-2 artist would lie in, belly down, to suspend himself over his giant canvases.

“He’d put skateboards under the painting to help rotate them, but at some point you can’t reach the middle,” Herron said. “So this is something he experimented with to help him get to the middle of the canvas.”

THE ARTIST

Born in 1904 in Ohio, Kirkland arrived in Denver in 1929 after being offered a job as the founding director of the University of Denver’s art department. The 25-year-old, fresh from graduate school, surprised his employees when he showed up; they hadn’t realized how young he was. He quickly won them over, though, and worked at the school for many years.

During a break from teaching at the university, he began his own school, where he finagled a deal to have his students get credit at the college for classes. Kirkland eventually returned to DU, where he retired in 1969, and spent the rest of his life painting.

“He was a really sharp guy. Quick-witted. A pun and a jokester,” Herron said. “Maybe a bit of a taskmaster, too. He could be a pretty harsh critic.”

His standout dot paintings were derived from a breakthrough technique of mixing oil and water, then pouring the mixture onto a flat canvas and coaxing it around. As the water evaporated, it dried, and bubbles would pop, creating small dot-filled textures. Captivated, he began trying to emulate the process and make dots.

First, he worked by dipping the back end of a paintbrush, or a stick, into the mixture, and finally landed on using wooden dowels – broom handles he sawed off to create a perfect orb.

His career is a testament to staying the course and embracing inspiration whenever it shows up, even if it’s during a later season in life. His dot paintings came late in his career and became his most prolific era.

“Don’t stop because you never know what you’re going to hit on later in your life,” Goodrum said. “It’s never too late. You could hit on the best thing you’ve ever done.”

DETAILS

The Kirkland, 1201 Bannock St., Denver, $22-$30; $19-$27 65 and older; $19-$27 students, teachers, active military, veterans; free 18 and younger, admission includes entrance to Denver Art Museum; 720-865-5000, denverartmuseum.org/en/collection/kirkland