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Maurice Sendak could have been celebrating. After years of working as a writer and illustrator, he had shot to superstardom in 1964 with “Where the Wild Things Are.” The book, which narrates a child’s imaginative journey, had just won the Caldecott Medal and was on its way to selling more than 26 million copies worldwide.

Instead, in the following years, Sendak threw himself into writing new books, including “Higglety Pigglety Pop! or There Must Be More To Life.” The story follows a dog, inspired by Sendak’s own beloved Jennie, who embarks on a quest to see whether there’s more to life, beyond her comfortable existence. Children like the book, but the driving question is not a kid’s question, Jonathan Weinberg, the curator and director of research at the Maurice Sendak Foundation, explained: “It’s the great celebrity question, like, ‘well, is this the meaning of life? Is that all there is?’”

That question could also be seen as driving “Wild Things: The Art of Maurice Sendak,” a retrospective at the Denver Art Museum that runs through Feb. 17. The show, curated by Weinberg and the Denver Art Museum’s director, Christoph Heinrich, features around 450 objects, tracing Sendak’s lifetime of creative work, as he illustrated more than 100 books.

Stefania Van Dyke, the museum’s associate director of interpretive engagement, explained that the aim is to “help people understand that he’s more than ‘Where The Wild Things Are.’”

ImageThe exhibition unfolds over 11 “chapters,” the first of which outlines Sendak’s roots and his relationship with his characters.Credit...Matthew Defeo for The New York Times

The show was based upon “Wild Things Are Happening: The Art of Maurice Sendak,” an exhibition of about 150 works that opened at the Columbus Museum of Art in October 2022, then toured to the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. The first major museum retrospective since Sendak died in 2012, it was in development for years.

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