“A few years ago, we had Monet here. Next year, we’ll have Pisarro,” Denver Art Museum’s Frederick and Jan Mayer Director Christoph Heinrich said of the main gallery—now home to children’s book author-illustrator Maurice Sendak’s largest-ever retrospective, “Wild Things: The Art of Maurice Sendak,” showing through February 17, 2025. Heinrich recently gave PW a personal tour of the exhibit.
It’s a well-deserved spot, Heinrich believes. “Maurice Sendak was an artist, not an illustrator,” he said, an opinion visitors will likely share after touring this 450-object exhibit. Co-organized by the Denver Art Museum and the Columbus Museum of Art, in partnership with the Maurice Sendak Foundation, the show dives deep into Sendak’s artistic origins, sources of inspiration, and increasing complexity as an artist who refused to settle into one style, no matter how commercially successful it had proven.
That said, the exhibit is also designed to be a satisfying multimedia feast for all ages—especially to devotees of the Caldecott-winning Where the Wild Things Are, beginning with the show’s theatrical entrance, a cut paper-like replica of the stage curtain Sendak designed for the book’s later opera, made more inviting by music Sendak adored: Mozart’s The Magic Flute. “In some ways the show is like a big pop-up book. And in other ways it’s like stepping onto a theater stage,” Heinrich said. “These two poles, the small book and the big production of an opera, were the two poles of Maurice Sendak’s life. Between them is all this work that pushed boundaries.” Over his 65-year career, Sendak charted new creative territory in children’s books, and then in stage design and production, as well as film, collaborating with talents such as Spike Jonze, Carole King, and Tony Kushner.
For the first time, all of Sendak’s final artwork for Where the Wild Things Are is gathered for public display, appearing around midway through an exhibit divided into 11 chronological and thematic “chapters.” This complete collection of the book’s paintings provides the opportunity to appreciate their original vibrancy, subtlety, and inventive mix of watercolor, pencil, and ink. Also on display are printed copies of Where the Wild Things Are, showing some of its 40+ translations, even including Mayan and Latin. Artifacts from the book’s later incarnations include two giant, kid-pleasing, Jim Henson-created monster costumes from Spike Jonze’s feature film and, on a more intimate scale, Sendak’s costume studies for the Where the Wild Things opera.
The exhibit spotlights Sendak’s artistic process—seen, for example, in his 1952 “fantasy sketch” which fully laid out the story for Wild Things more than a decade before it was published. (Sendak apparently saved every scrap of paper during his long career, and returned to them, as there were often years between concept and product.) With fantasy sketches, Sendak would listen to, say, Mozart, and challenge himself to tell a complete story through a series of drawings before the music ended. Sendak was also exceptionally involved in the publishing process, including typography choice and endpaper design. His book dummies provide a taste of his craft. So does the whiteout-streaked final art for A Kiss for Little Bear and countless other books. Endpapers are used as wallpaper in the exhibit’s reading area. And a 1950 sketchbook underscores his iterative process. Sendak’s very rough drawings of a girl he saw from his childhood bedroom window in Brooklyn would evolve into the grandly dressed, dramatic star of his Rosie books. (Sendak was often sick as a child, which is why windows figure prominently in his work—see Kenny’s Window.).
For visitors, Sendak’s work also becomes a window into his life, revealing, for instance, how a sketch in Higglety Pigglety Pop mirrors a family photo of him as a baby. Display text and audio narration also convey how the monsters in Where the Wild Things Are sprung from his child’s view of loud, looming immigrant relatives who would kiss him, pinch his cheeks and say—to him, ominously—“I could eat you up!” Sendak said that all of his characters were a part of him, a point the exhibit makes throughout. “Sure, he produced things that became a commercial product, but he didn’t intend them for a specific audience,” Heinrich said. “These were his illustrations, his stories. Like every artist, he just had to write them.”
“Maurice was a great artist, period,” agreed Michael di Capua, Sendak’s editor for more than 50 years. This is why he believes Sendak’s work remains so beloved the world over, and why the Denver exhibit sells out every weekend and many weekdays. “I think the simple explanation is that people of all ages respond to great art,” di Capua said. “Maurice’s art communicates, catches the eye, and makes you want to look harder. I’ve seen six-month-olds obsessively examining Where the Wild Things Are when other picture books wouldn’t hold their attention.”
A Self-Made Artist
Denver Art Museum’s exhibit traces Sendak’s progression into a highly sophisticated artist despite being largely self-taught. Paintings from his short stint at the Art Students League of New York are impressive, indicating his early promise as a fine artist. However, working at F.A.O. Schwarz would turn his life in a different direction. His talent at window displays led to discovery by Ursula Nordstrom, publisher of children’s books at Harper & Brothers—and his first commission to illustrate a children’s book, The Wonderful Farm, in 1951.
Book after book, Sendak pushed himself to try on new styles, a trait that becomes evident when viewed through such a comprehensive collection—especially a side-by-side display of his early books with writer Ruth Krauss. She and husband Crockett Johnson mentored Sendak and encouraged him not to settle on a style, despite its success. Out of the eight books they collaborated on, seven feature different illustration styles. The exhibit also makes it possible to see how Sendak’s self-taught skills sharpened over the years. About the Little Bear series, which stretched over an 11-year period, di Capua said, “Look at them chronologically. It’s the same characters, but you see his draftsmanship, his increased complexity in drawing, evolving from book to book.”
His career was an “extraordinary example of self-education,” di Capua said. “By looking at other great artists—and as he would have told you unashamedly, mimicking other great artists—Maurice got better and better.” Sendak’s wide-ranging personal art collection reveals his inspiration and adds further dimension to the exhibit. Displayed side by side with his own work, the pieces spotlight Sendak’s ability to adopt new techniques and make them his own. An intricate watercolor and pencil of a bat by Beatrix Potter inspired his illustrations for Randall Jarrell’s The Bat-Poet. Dark and moody etched cross-hatching in British artist Samuel Palmer’s The Lonely Tower finds its way into Higglety Pigglety Pop. The romanticism of Winslow Homer and Goya are represented in his work as well, along with Winsor McKay’s early 1900s comic strip, Little Nemo in Slumberland, whose fluid panels and fantastic adventures inspired In the Night Kitchen.
This kind of thoughtful analysis and celebration of Sendak’s work is exactly what the Maurice Sendak Foundation hoped for—and found—at Sendak’s preceding shows at the Columbus Museum, the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, and now at this four-fold expansion at the Denver Art Museum. “We were determined to get into an art museum and not just strictly a children’s museum,” said executive director Lynn Caponera. It took some time and talking to many museums, she said, but these three shows indicate an increasing appreciation of Sendak’s artistry—by audiences of all ages. “People are realizing that this is a serious show that also appeals to children,” Caponera said. She has been to the Denver show twice and was amazed by how intently children were listening to the audio tours and taking in the art. It’s a good reminder of the picture book’s importance in young children’s lives, she said. “They’re the first books you give your children, what they grow up on and remember. So they should be good quality. People overlook the fact that this is literature too.”
Once the show ends in February, materials will return to the Maurice Sendak Foundation in Ridgefield, Conn., awaiting their next outing. Caponera said the foundation is in talks with East Coast venues to celebrate Sendak’s centennial in three years, as well as some European venues. Clearly, Maurice Sendak remains very much a part of our culture. When asked to imagine how his longtime friend would feel about the current exhibit, di Capua said, “It would be, to him, the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. I know he suffered from being relegated, as he would scornfully put it, to being ʻa kiddie book artist.’ I know that this kind of validation of his work would have made him quietly, very, very happy.”
