Denver Art Museum Stages 'DIVA': 233 Objects, 60 Outfits, One Legend Machine

The Denver Art Museum opened "DIVA" on Oct. 4 with 233 objects, including 60 outfits, devoted to the careers and myths of 90-plus performers. The show runs through Jan. 31 and is split into two phases the museum calls "acts."

Jill D'Alessandro, director of the museum's Avenir Institute of Textile Arts and Fashion, curated the exhibition for Denver. Holly Harmon, an interpretive specialist at the museum, worked on it with her.

The exhibition's premise rests on numbers that behave like legends. Whitney Houston sang seven notes in under one second on live TV. Dolly Parton has been credited with writing more than 3,000 songs, among them the much-covered hits "Jolene" and "I Will Always Love You." The Peruvian singer Yma Sumac had a range of at least four octaves.

What does a diva actually do?

The show answers with behavior as much as voice. Sarah Bernhardt once took 27 curtain calls after a show. Grace Jones requested two dozen oysters, on ice, in her green room while on tour. The soprano Adelina Patti built herself a theater in her castle.

"Divas' powers are the stuff of legend," the museum's framing acknowledges. "So are their demands."

D'Alessandro's reading of the material is more precise. Describing a gown in the exhibition, she said: "It's a Swarovski sheer gown that is just exquisite. And then she wears it with a durag. And to me, that's such a Rihanna moment of her high-low aesthetic."

She offered a similar annotation for Dolly Parton's sparkly white dress. "We heard an interview with her … that she said that she liked to wear white onstage because it made her feel closer to God," D'Alessandro said.

What does the show claim to cover?

According to the museum, the exhibition explores the origin of the term "diva" and the evolution of divas — both female and male — whose performances, appearances, personalities and use of their voices to advocate change enhanced their outsize public figures and, in the museum's words, "left indelible impressions."

The presentation itself leans theatrical. Against a glittering backdrop and a powerful soundtrack, the display gives, in the museum's phrasing, "the Dollys, Whitneys and Marías their due."

Harmon made the design ambition explicit: "Much like the diva, the show itself is over the top — that is the goal."

What is not yet on the record

The museum has not said how the two "acts" divide — which performers appear in which phase, or how the split will be staged across the run through Jan. 31. Nor has it detailed which male divas made the cut of roughly 90 featured figures. Those specifics will land with visitors when they walk the glitter.

What the exhibition does establish is institutional weight: a major American museum committing 233 objects and a four-month run to a category long dismissed as tabloid furniture — the demanding star — and treating the demand itself as part of the art. Whether "DIVA" sustains that argument beyond the Swarovski will be tested in Denver through the winter.