Talk with a Curator of the Denver Art Museum

Rory Padeken, the DAM Vicki and Kent Logan Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, will share about the world of modern contemporary art.
He will share details on an upcoming exhibition co-organized with the Amon Carter Museum of American Art titled "The Statue of Liberty from Bartholdi to Warhol." The exhibition opens in Fort Worth in August 2026 and in Denver in March 2027. He will have some tips on collecting modern art and how to get started.

Padeken comes to the DAM from the San José Museum of Art, where he currently serves as Curator. For more than a decade, he worked to develop cross-disciplinary exhibitions and programs that encourage creative and critical thinking. His curatorial work is centered on advocacy for artists, expanding the narratives of modern and contemporary art through key acquisitions for the collection, and the critical examination of timely social issues. Notable recent exhibitions and projects include an exploration of Vietnamese and Vietnamese American stories of war and migration through Dinh Q. Lê’s video installations; a workshop on racial justice with artist Glenn Kaino; the critically-acclaimed exhibition Border Cantos: Richard Misrach | Guillermo Galindo, which addressed the humanitarian crisis at the Mexico-US border; mounting the first major U.S. solo exhibition of video animations and drawings by Tabaimo from Japan; and organizing the first solo museum exhibition and scholarly catalogue on the work of Jean Conner opening in May 2022.

“The DAM’s commitment to telling artists’ stories and engaging with the community aligns beautifully with my own curatorial approach, which aims to connect art with everyday life,” Padeken said. “I look forward to working with the talented team at the DAM to showcase the museum’s modern and contemporary holdings through an inclusive lens.”

Padeken edited and contributed to the publication Dinh Q. Lê: True Journey is Return (2018), which received support from the Henry Luce Foundation, and has contributed essays and articles to exhibition catalogs and publications on the work of Tomokazu Matsumyama, Yojiro Imasaka and Pae White, served as a juror for numerous public art projects, worked with artists to produce films on their work, and organized artist commissions and public programs with Diana Thater, Lordy Rodriguez, Evan Holm, Guillermo Galindo, Fallen Fruit (David Allen Burns and Austin Young), Won Ju Lim and Clare Rojas, among others.

Selected in 2017 for the Silicon Valley Business Journal’s Top 40 Under 40 list, he is a member of the Association of Art Museum Curators and the Indigenous Curatorial Collective/Collectif des commissaires autochtones.

After starting his studies at the University of Hawaii in Mãnoa, Honolulu, Padeken received his BA in History of Art from the University of California, Berkeley, and his MA in Visual & Critical Studies from California College of the Arts in San Francisco.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Denver Book Society