American Magazine: November 2013

Kline retrospective, the first ever, honoring the
artist who had died the previous spring at the
age of 51. The show and the gallery, which was
located in a spacious, renovated town house
just off Dupont Circle and conveniently down
the street from the Jockey Club, got lots of
press—in all the right places. “It was a great
start,” says Denney, who was then assistant
director. “But the question was, would we be
able to maintain this high level?”
The answer was a resounding yes, the
proof being a major exhibition titled The
Popular Image, which opened in 1963.
In this multivenue showcase for pop art,
Denney brought together a lineup of
impressive but not yet famous artists that
included Jim Dine, Andy Warhol, Tom
Wesselman, Claes Oldenburg, Robert
Rauschenberg, John Cage, Jasper Johns,
George Brecht, and James Rosenquist.
Oldenburg held a happening at a dry
cleaning place on P Street NW. New York’s
experimental Judson Dance Theater—a
collective of dancers, composers, and visual
artists based in the Village—performed at
the America on Wheels roller skating rink in
Adams Morgan, showcasing dance pioneers
Steve Paxton, Carolyn Brown, Yvonne Rainier,
and David Gordon. And Rauschenberg
made history with the premiere of his iconic
performance piece, Pelican, which was created
for that space and in which the artist skated
around with an open parachute on his back,
an homage to the Wright brothers.
“The art press loved us,” Denney
remembers. But the mainstream media,
including Time and Newsweek, ran pages
mocking the new art and the show, calling
Washington’s effort to be hip deluded. On
the other hand, international art impresario
Pontus Hultén, then director of Sweden’s
modern art museum, Moderna Museet, was
so impressed, he told a reporter that it was
“the best and most important assemblage
of pop art that I have ever seen.”
Having brought pop art to D.C.,
Denney moved on to the
international stage, serving
as vice commissioner for the
American contingent at the
1964 Venice Biennale. “We
stayed at the old American
consulate,” she says, on the Grand Canal near
collector Peggy Guggenheim’s pink palazzo.
“At first Peggy didn’t think much of me
or what we were doing, but after a few
parties we ended up as friends. We’d
sunbathe on the terrace with all this art
around, and she’d have her dogs running
all over and cocktails constantly coming—
it was something else.”
Despite the art world politics,
Rauschenberg took the overall grand
prize, a first for an American. But to qualify
and meet the judging rules, his work had
to be moved from the ancillary American
gallery to the official American pavilion.
“The only way to do this in the time we
had, basically overnight, was to ferry the
paintings over,” Denney says. Time magazine,
in its coverage of the American win, featured
a picture of Denney resolutely holding a
Rauschenberg painting in a U.S. Navy launch,
motoring down the Grand Canal to the
exhibition grounds.
On her return to Washington,
Denney was determined
not to let the momentum
die. She started her own
Private Arts Foundation
(PAF) and, in 1966, put
on the citywide Now
Festival, attracting such emerging talent as
Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground.
“Just to show you how much people wanted
to be part of it, I put Andy and the Velvet
Underground up in the old Cairo Hotel
over by Dupont Circle,” she says. “The only
payment Andy asked for was four new tires
for the car—to get them all back to New York
when they were done.”
PAF enabled Denney to continue offering
grants to artists and to bring theater and
performance artists to the capital. But
finding space was a challenge. So in 1974,
she founded the Washington Project for
the Arts (WPA) in an old opera house on
G Street NW. It quickly became a mecca for
those, from curators to collectors, who were
hungry for the new. Pegboard covered the
walls (“Much easier to hang things that
way,” Denney insists), but that didn’t deter
the artists, who knew that the WPA could
launch careers.
But by 1979, Denney was restless. It was
time to hand the WPA over to others. For her
almost last hurrah, she decided to bring punk
to a decidedly unpunky Washington. “People
thought we were crazy for doing the Punk
Festival. We had fashion, we had the artist
“THE ONLY
PAYMENT ANDY
[WARHOL] ASKED
FOR WAS FOUR
NEW TIRES FOR
THE CAR, TO GET
THEM ALL BACK TO
NEW YORK WHEN
THEY WERE DONE.”
known as Peanut Butter, we had all the
people you’re hearing about again today.” She
pauses. “Look, the Metropolitan Museum
had that huge punk-themed opening earlier
this year—and a lot of the artists who were in
our Punk Festival were in theirs!”
After leaving the WPA, Denney continued
to look at everything, everywhere. And she
still took the time to curate: an Ed Kelly
retrospective at Georgetown’s Museum of
Contemporary Art, a compelling exhibit in
which artists interpreted fashion for Gallery
K, and Good Things Come in Small Packages:
The Collection of Elisabeth French at the
American University Museum in 2010.
The latter highlighted Washingtonian
French’s longstanding commitment to
support young, local artists. “People need
to know you can put together a collection
without a lot of money or a lot of space to
put it in,” says Denney.
Two years ago, Denney’s impact on
contemporary art was recognized at the
30th anniversary gala of ArtTable Inc.,
a nonprofit that supports and celebrates
women in the arts. The event, held at the
Museum of Modern Art in New York,
honored a group that included Alanna
Heiss, a major figure in the alternative space
movement who founded P.S. 1 Contemporary
Art Center and the Clocktower Gallery;
artists Miriam Schapiro and Faith Ringgold;
New York Times arts critic Roberta Smith;
and the Guerrilla Girls, an underground
activist artist group.
“What great company,” Denney says.
I still can’t believe I was up there on stage
with them.”
LET’S TALK #AMERICANMAG 21