DENVER—Running an art museum had been at the back of Christoph Heinrich’s mind for several years. The 49-year-old German curator even turned down a few job offers, because the posts didn’t seem right. But when the Denver Art Museum tapped him in October to replace director Lewis Sharp, 67, who is retiring at the end of December after 20 years, he did not hesitate.

Heinrich, formerly chief curator for contemporary art, collections, and exhibitions at the Hamburger Kunsthalle, took over as Denver’s curator of modern and contemporary art in October 2007. By that point, Sharp had already made clear his intentions to step down in the near future, and it didn’t take long for him and the museum’s board to identify Heinrich as a potential successor. In January, the curator was named deputy director, a position that served as something of tryout, and the board clearly liked what it saw. Without interviewing or even seriously considering anyone else, it selected him to replace Sharp.

“He’s a quiet leader,” Kent Logan of Vail, a nationally known art collector and member of the museum’s board, told the Denver Post. “He’s not a grandstander. He has solidity to him, if you will. His curatorial credentials are impeccable, and he brings an international perspective to bear, which I think is a new step for the museum.”

Under Sharp’s leadership, the museum’s annual budget grew from $6.5 million to a high of $24 million, and it added three new curatorial departments: photography, Western American art and architecture, and design and graphics. But his most significant legacy is a controversial $110 million addition that he shepherded to completion in 2006. The jutting, sharply angled structure designed by Daniel Libeskind has drawn equal measures of critical plaudits and brickbats. Sharp’s reputation suffered something of a black eye earlier this year, when the Association of Art Museum Directors delivered a strongly worded advisory against “fractional deaccessioning” as a means of raising funds for purchasing art. To acquire a Western-themed portrait by Thomas Eakins, Lewis struck an eyebrow-raising deal with Denver art collector Philip Anschutz: In return for a financial donation, the billionaire businessman received 50 percent ownership in the Eakins as well as another work already in the museum’s collection.

Earlier this year, the museum had to scale back expenses, including the elimination of a planned visiting exhibition, slashing its original 2009 budget from $20.5 million to $18 million. But it ended the fiscal year on Sept. 30 in the black, and is in stable financial health overall. The institution is poised to unveil one of the biggest and most attention-grabbing shows it has ever organized: “Embrace!” (Nov. 14 – April 4). Seventeen artists from the around the world, including Zhong Biao (China), Tobias Rehberger (Germany), and Jessica Stockholder (U.S.), were invited to create installations addressing Libeskind’s unconventional architecture. It is no coincidence that the undertaking was conceived and overseen by Heinrich, who, showing off his fundraising prowess, managed to find donors to underwrite each of the 17 works.

“I think it’s a real exciting moment in time,” Heinrich said, “because the building was opened and there was a lot of ‘Wow!’ effect with its opening. We’re going to use ‘Embrace!’ as a second opening. I think it is as well a chance for a second start. We have the opportunity to fill this shell with our ideas and our creativity. Now real life begins. At first, after opening such a spectacular building, everybody is just talking about the building. Now people will ask: ‘What are they doing with that building? What is the program?’ And to fill this shell with our program — that’s the big challenge, and, I would say, that’s the big joy that is waiting for us.”

The director-to-be is not yet ready to talk specifics. But he did say that the days of simultaneously offering two or three different, large-scale shows are probably over. Instead, he foresees a group of exhibitions, perhaps drawing on different facets of the museum’s collection, centered on a single topic. Another priority will be reaching out to various segments of the Denver community, something that was a hallmark of “Embrace.” It required the collaboration of such organizations as the African Community Center, the University of Denver, and a host of volunteers to pull off.