Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) exhibits for 2013. Exhibitions are free with museum admission unless otherwise noted.

Hours: Wednesdays and Thursdays, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.; Fridays, 10 a.m.–10 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays, 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Museum admission: $8 adults, $4 ages 6-17, $6 seniors ages 62+, DIA members free.

Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) exhibitions for 2013 include:

Van Gogh Painting from Musée d’Orsay
February 19–May 28, 2013
The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) is bringing one of Vincent van Gogh’s most famous paintings from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris to its gallery walls. Van Gogh’s Bedroom in Arles will be on view February 19–May 28 in the Dutch galleries, where visitors saw the Vermeer painting last August. The painting will be installed along with three other Van Gogh paintings owned by the DIA. The display is supported by Talmer Bank.

Van Gogh produced three almost identical paintings on the theme of his bedroom. The first, in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, was created in October 1888. It was damaged during a flood that occurred while the painter was in the hospital in Arles. Almost a year later, Van Gogh made two copies of it: one, the same size, is now in the Art Institute of Chicago; the other, in the Musée d'Orsay, produced for his family in Holland, is smaller.

Motor City Muse: Detroit Photographs, Then and Now
Dec. 14, 2012–June 16, 2013
Motor City Muse looks at Detroit’s history, diverse population and culture through the eyes of photographers from as early as 1947 to as recently as last year: the Detroit pride in people who live here; the individuals and the city that powered the booming auto industry; fantasies woven into car ads; funny, unexpected moments; everyday life; gigantic cityscapes; and intimate portraits. The exhibition is organized by the DIA and is free with museum admission. Support has been provided by the Chrysler brand and Quicken Loans.
“Detroit’s culture has long held a deep fascination for photographers,” said Graham W. J. Beal, DIA director. “It is fitting that we have two sponsors also focused on Detroit’s vitality and we are grateful to both Chrysler and Quicken for supporting this presentation of Detroit as seen through the lenses of some of the most notable photographers in the world.”

Shirin Neshat
Through July 7, 2013
Shirin Neshat, an Iranian American artist living in New York City, is widely acclaimed for her extraordinary video installations and photography, yet her collected works are rarely considered as a singular production or displayed together. This mid-career retrospective includes nine video installations and two series of photography. Through visual metaphor and compelling sound, Neshat confronts the complexities of identity, gender and power to express her own vision that embraces the depth of Islamic tradition and concepts of individuality and liberty.
Her strikingly complex images integrate issues related to Iranian politics and history, images of Muslim women and references to Iranian literature. Her art explores the spaces between her personal aspirations, extraordinary life story, and socio-political situation in Iran, and, by extension, the Muslim world. Though deeply rooted in her Iranian background, Neshat’s work also incorporates universal themes of empowerment, loss, sacrifice, and the human desire for expression.
A richly illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition. A free app, Shirin Neshat at the DIA, is available for Android and iPad tablets at the Apple and Google Play stores. The interactive app provides the user with in-depth information about Neshat’s videos through short clips and select photographs in the exhibition, audio commentary by the artist and curator, an artist interview and links to additional information. A detailed timeline of Iran’s modern history helps place Neshat’s work in the context of events that inspired her powerful art. Podcasts of her lectures at the DIA are available at www.globalimaginariesdia.org.

Ellsworth Kelly: Kelly’s prints of geometric shapes, flowers and plants
May 24–September 8, 2013
Ellsworth Kelly’s famous prints of geometric shapes, along with prints of flowers and  plants, will be on view at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) May 24–September 8. The exhibition is free with museum admission. For more than 50 years, Kelly has created paintings, sculptures, and more than 330 editions of individual prints in what has become one of the most recognizable styles of modern art. While Kelly is best known for his colorful geometric subjects, his art is far broader. More than half of his pieces are in black and white, and he has worked simultaneously in a realistically based drawing style to create more than 70 plant and flower lithographs as well as a dozen portraits. The exhibition features more than 100 prints from the collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer and the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation of Portland, Oregon. They cover all periods from the mid-1960s to the present and are arranged on two floors of the DIA. The color prints in the first floor Schwartz Galleries for Prints and Drawings are divided into two of Kelly’s main themes, Curves and Grids; his series Twenty-Seven Color Lithographs is also on view. Kelly’s work in black and white is displayed in the second-floor galleries adjacent to Rivera Court and includes examples from all six of Kelly’s plant series, his geometric subjects, and his 2005 series Rivers.

Watch Me Move: The Animation Show
October 6, 2013–January 5, 2014
Watch Me Move is the most extensive animation show ever mounted, featuring both iconic moments and lesser-known masterpieces from the last 150 years. Visitors will have the rare opportunity to see an incredible array of animation techniques in more than 100 animated film segments from across generations and cultures. The exhibition includes animation’s great inventors, innovators and artists, from Georges Méliès and Chuck Jones to William Kentridge and Tim Burton, as well as animation studios such as Walt Disney, Aardman, Studio Ghibli and Pixar. This is a ticketed exhibition. Ticket prices TBD.
As a complement to Watch Me Move, the Detroit Film Theatre will offer a selection of feature-length animation, festival compilations and personal appearances by contemporary animators over the course of the exhibition.
This exhibition has been organized by Barbican Centre, London. The Barbican Centre is provided by the City of London Corporation as part of its contribution to the cultural life in London and the nation.

Foto Europa, 1840 to the Present
October 25, 2013-April 27, 2014
Foto Europa features more than 70 works by Europeans photographers, mostly drawn from the DIA’s collection. Rare examples of early photographic techniques, classic black-and-white photography and large-scale contemporary color photographs are included, many of which have never been on view.
Highlights include British pioneers William Henry Fox-Talbot, war documentarian Roger Fenton, Victorian-era portraitists Julia Margaret Cameron and Hill and Adamson as well as experimental work and abstraction from between the World Wars by Herbert Bayer, Lázló Moholy-Nagy and Man Ray. From mid-century are innovators in the field of photo reportage including Bill Brandt, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank as well as work by influential 20th-century German photographers August Sander, Bernd and Hilla Becher and large-scale color work by Candida Höfer. Also on view are never-before-seen works by contemporary artists Christian Boltanski and Gerhard Richter who challenge traditional ideas about photography as truthful representations of reality.
A special section devoted to recent work by European photographers in Detroit includes the contrasting architectural studies by German artist Karin Jobst and French duo Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, and portraiture by Dutch photographer Corine Vermeulen, who currently resides in Detroit.

Civil War Exhibit
December 27th, 2012 - permanent exhibit
To commemorate the Civil War and the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) presents a new installation of American art that explores the themes of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln and the abolition of slavery. The works will be on view beginning Dec. 27 and will become part of the permanent collection galleries in the Richard A. Manoogian Wing of American art.

The works are:

• Patriotic Bouquet (1861), George Henry Hall’s still life with red, white and blue flowers coming out of the muzzle of a rifle
• At the Front (1866), George C. Lambin’s moving image of a weary Union officer
• The Boyhood of Lincoln (1868), Eastman Johnson’s great historic portrait, on loan from the University of Michigan Museum of Art
• Civil War Scene (1870–71), by William Rimmer, which shows a wounded soldier reclining beneath a tree, gazing at a keepsake, in front of a scene showing carnage from a recent battle
• Sunday Morning (1876), by Thomas Waterman Wood, which celebrates the fruits of Emancipation by showing a young African American girl reading to her aged grandmother
• Abraham Lincoln, The Man (modeled 1884–87, cast 1911), a reduced version of Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ monumental sculpture in Chicago’s Lincoln Park

Detroit Institute of Arts’ Collection of early American Silver on Display after 10 Years in Storage
January 17th, 2013 - permanent exhibit
The collection was relegated to storage in 2002 when the renovation of the museum’s historic 1927 building led to the closing of the American colonial galleries. Lack of funding for new exhibition cases meant the silver collection had to remain in storage when the museum reopened in 2007. In 2011, the Americana Foundation, based in Novi, Michigan, awarded the DIA a substantial grant for new research on the silver collection and to support construction of new state-of-the-art exhibition cases to house it. The Americana Foundation was established by Adolph H. Meyer and Ginger Meyer. It supports educational and advocacy programs that address the preservation of American agriculture; the conservation of natural resources; and the protection and presentation of material expressions of America’s heritage, with a particular focus on decorative arts from the colonial and early Federal periods.

The new installation will include 59 of the most important examples of early American silver at the DIA and two important late18th-century Chinese export bowls. Highlights of the new installation include:

• Tankard (about 1695). A rare drinking vessel made in Boston by Edward Winslow
• Sugar Bowl with Cover (about 1755). Made in New York by Myer Myers. Myers was the most important Jewish silversmith active in colonial America. This sugar bowl was donated to the DIA in 1955 by “Members of the Jewish Community of Detroit in honor of the American Jewish Tercentenary 1654–1954.”
• Sugar Basket (about 1780). Made in Boston by the master silversmith and patriot Paul Revere
• Teapot (early 1790s). Made in Boston by the master silversmith and patriot Paul Revere
• Punch Bowl (about 1790). Chinese export porcelain, made for the American market, with Masonic markings

DIA Debuts Cultural Living Room Program
June 14th, 2013 - permanent feature
The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) will debut the first stage of its new Cultural Living Room program on Friday, June 14, with a revamped Kresge Court that will provide the community with an attractive, comfortable space to meet, drink, eat or just hang out.
One of the museum’s most inviting spaces, the stately Kresge Court is undergoing a makeover that includes new lighting, seating, light food fare and beverages. The second phase of the program will debut in July on the museum’s front lawn.  Exhibitions currently on view are Shirin Neshat, Ellsworth Kelly: Prints and Motor City Muse: Detroit Photographs, Then and Now, which ends June 16.

Click here for the monthly events calendar for the DIA provided by Oakland County Moms. 

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Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA)
5200 Woodward Avenue
Detroit, Michigan 48202
313-833-7900
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About the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA)
The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), one of the premier art museums in the United States, is home to more than 60,000 works that comprise a multicultural survey of human creativity from ancient times through the 21st century. From the first van Gogh painting to enter a U.S. museum (Self-Portrait, 1887), to Diego Rivera's world-renowned Detroit Industry murals (1932–33), the DIA's collection is known for its quality, range, and depth. The DIA’s mission is to create opportunities for all visitors to find personal meaning in art. Programs are made possible in part with support from the City of Detroit.