Denver Art Museum’s “All Stars” exhibit feels under-curated

Edward Hopper’s 1926 painting “Sunday” is among the paintings visitors may recognize at “All Stars.” (Provided by the Denver Art Museum)

The Phillips Collection is one of this country’s most distinguished art museums. Located in the posh Dupont Circle neighborhood in Washington, D.C., the Phillips boasts of being the first modern art museum in the United States. Since 1921, it has presented a multitude of works scattered about the rooms of an ornate, oversized mansion that is decked out with carved wood paneling, arched doorways, fireplaces and a very grand piano.

A visit to the Phillips Collection unfolds like a journey back through time, to the early 20th century when wealthy Duncan Phillips, suffering from the sudden loss of his father and brother, began acquiring art to soothe his soul. The paintings, and the house in which the Phillips family lived, synchronize together in a way that is truly unique in the museum world.

The exhibition titled “All Stars: American Artists from The Phillips Collection,” currently on display at the Denver Art Museum, is a variety show, of sorts, that pulls paintings off the mansion walls and sends them on the road. One assumes it is a way to share these cultural treasures with the world while raising a few bucks for the museum.

And “All Stars” is, in many ways, a stellar attraction. With an admission upcharge of just $5 over the regular DAM ticket price, you should see it. There are icons in the lineup, such as Edward Hopper, Jacob Lawrence and Georgia O’Keeffe, and there are swell examples of these artists’ works on view.

The O’Keeffe, for instance, “Large Dark Red Leaves on White,” from 1925, is exactly as you would think it should be: a simple, sensual oil painting that evokes both the folds of a pillowy leaf and the folds of intimate, human flesh.

The Hopper, a 1926 oil titled “Sunday,” depicts a man sitting alone and solemn on a wooden sidewalk and has all of the painter’s signature ethereal moodiness, and then some.

Better still, there are numerous painters many people who visit the show will not know, but who display extraordinary talent. Go see this exhibition and you will get acquainted with Stefan Hirsch, Guy Pène du Bois, Paul Dougherty, Aaron Maier-Carretero and others, from different decades, They provide considerable depth to a collection that has continued to be refined and expanded well past the time of its originator, who died in 1966.

What you won’t get is Duncan Phillips’ glorious mansion, and that is a considerable loss. It is that setting, and the way it connects to the collector’s legacy, that pulls all of this art together. That combo is the trademark the Phillips trades upon and it has gone missing in the vast modern setting of the Denver Art Museum’s Hamilton Building.

The problem, of course, is not the work itself. Walt Kuhn, Morris Louis, Marsden Hartley, Richard Diebenkorn — who could quibble with all that art superpower? It’s just that the assemblage here feels disconnected. One of these. One of those. This style next to that style.  A superstar here, an overlooked genius there.

There is a valiant effort to recreate some of the luxe aura of the mansion, and some of that works. The Phillips hosts a popular concert series and there is both audio and video of the performances in the galleries. Music fills the space with a lovely mood. The walls are painted in sophisticated, earthy tones. Like everything at DAM, the offering is professionally produced.

Still, it feels a little under-curated. There is a lot to look at but not enough to learn. It is the opposite of most high-level exhibitions that go deep on a subject, theme or historical happening or dig into the background of an individual artist. I appreciate pretty paintings as much as the next museum visitor, but I want to take away something more profound from my time there.

That reflects badly on the collection. “All Stars” has all the depth of a beauty pageant. Even worse, in this setting, it starts to look like an art grab, a  collection assembled in the way one might collect stamps or salt-and-pepper shakers where the goal is to shop until you drop and get one example of everything that ever rolled off the production line.

In that way, this exhibition thrills and disappoints simultaneously. On the good side, visitors get to see two works from Jacob Lawrence’s “The Migration Series,” a 60-piece, paint-on-panel series from 1940-41 that depicts scenes from the post-World War I migration of Black Americans from the rural South to the then-industrial North.

On the downside, you do not see the other 58 panels, or at least enough of them to feel the monumental nature of Lawrence’s effort. When last I visited the Phillips Collection, in September, there was a significant grouping of the paintings, enough to fill all four walls of a separate, dedicated room, and convey the multifaceted narrative that Lawrence created. It was an amazing experience.