The Denver Art Museum is turning its cameras on the objects of everyday life. What We’ve Been Up To: Things opens November 22, 2026, in the Martin Building, and it invites visitors to look again at the humble things that surround us — and to ask how, and why, we give them meaning.
The exhibition is the third in a series celebrating the museum’s photography department, which has collected hundreds of artworks since it was established in 2008. After chapters devoted to landscape photography and pictures of people, this installment shares photographs that have never been exhibited before, showing the great variety of images the DAM collects.
The show takes its cue from poet William Carlos Williams, who wrote in Paterson: “No ideas but in things.” In these galleries, a thing might be just an object — or, through the photographer’s eye, it might stand for something else entirely: a question, a symbol, a fragment of a story, a memory, a metaphor, even a joke. Highlights include Zeke Berman’s platinum print Measuring Cup (1979), Roman de Salvo’s Hydrant Fire and Carol Golemboski’s Lost at Sea.
What We’ve Been Up To: Things runs November 22, 2026 through April 25, 2027, on Level 6 of the Martin Building, and it is included in general admission. The museum will also host Anderman Photography Lectures connected to the show, with Patricia Lagarde on December 8, 2026 and Steve Fitch on March 16, 2027 — two more happy reasons to spend an afternoon with Denver’s photographs.
Photo: Zeke Berman, Measuring Cup (1979), Denver Art Museum
