DENVER, CO.- The Denver Art Museum just announced that it will host Artisans & Kings: Selected Treasures from the Louvre from October 6, 2007–January 6, 2008, as the first international exhibition in the new Frederic C. Hamilton Building . The Museum will present an array of masterworks including mainly decorative arts, such as Gobelin’s 1775 tapestry The Loves of the Gods, Vertume and Pomone and a selection of Sèvres porcelain, completed by sculptures, antiquities, paintings and drawings by Rubens, Titian, Velazquez and Dürer, among others. A number of these works will have already been presented at the High Museum of Art of Atlanta in spring 2007.

Henri Loyrette, director of the Louvre, explains that "a major component of the Louvre’s strategy is to fulfill our universal vocation as completely as we can, while at the same time renewing it." It seems "especially natural for us to turn to the United States , with whom we have very special, longstanding ties. In this respect Denver exhibitions in the coming three next years will contribute to bolster our ties with the United States ."

“We are thrilled to work with the Louvre to bring these masterpieces to the Western U.S. for the first time," said Denver Art Museum director Lewis Sharp. "The expanded Denver Art Museum complex enables us to showcase the best artwork from around the world. We are delighted to kick off our traveling exhibition program with a show of this caliber."

This large-scale presentation will be followed by two other exhibitions of Louvre material at the DAM in 2008 and 2009. This exhibition will serve as a learning opportunity for all involved and enhance knowledge-sharing for the future.

Artisans & Kings: Selected Treasures from the Louvre, tells the intriguing stories of Paris’ artisans and kings through decorative arts, sculptures, paintings, antiquities and drawings from the reigns of Louis XIV, XV and XVI. These Royal Collections became the core of the Louvre’s holdings and the three monarchs played a pivotal role in what is considered the greatest period of development for French decorative arts. The exhibition draws on the breadth of the Louvre’s holdings and showcases this material in a way not possible in the Louvre’s massive permanent collections.

The Denver Art Museum is nearly doubling the size of its facility with the 146,000-square-foot addition of the Frederic C. Hamilton Building scheduled to open October 7, 2006. The Hamilton Building will add more than 20,000 square feet of temporary exhibition space, where this Louvre exhibition will debut in fall 2007. This expanded exhibition space has given the DAM the opportunity to take on such a major initiative, and will be the only venue in the West to host the Louvre’s collections.