In these works by Enrique Chagoya\, recently acquired for the University Art Collections\, the artist dismantles the seductive promise of utopia\, whether cast as modernist progress\, global capitalism\, or nationalist fantasy. Borrowing the form of pre-Columbian codices and folding maps\, he reveals how dreams of improvement often mask systems of conquest\, extraction\, and exclusion. Through biting satire\, he punctures these fantasies\, exposing the uneasy foundations beneath their promises of salvation.

For more than six decades\, Duane Michals has challenged the fundamental premise of photography: that it records reality. In more than one hundred portraits drawn from a major gift to the University of Denver\, Michals reveals that what matters most in a portrait cannot be seen. Intangible forces—emotion\, memory\, imagination\, mortality—animate his images. Through handwritten texts\, sequential narratives\, and interventions into the photographic surface\, Michals transforms portraiture from documentation into philosophical inquiry. Whether depicting cultural icons or intimate self-portraits\, he asks: how does one photograph the space between appearance and being? Beyond Likeness \;presents portraiture not as resemblance\, but as encounter between artist and subject\, body and spirit\, image and language.

2026 Pop-Up Exhibitions