With 140 galleries and hundreds of artworks housed inside a grand Beaux-Arts building, a visit to the Detroit Institute of Arts can feel overwhelming, especially if it’s your first time. Where should you start? What must you see?
Here’s a good place to start: A new series of audio tours available on the Bloomberg Connects app (search for the “Detroit Institute of Arts”, then tap “Audio Tour”) and on our Collections page.
The most comprehensive tour is “Artworks to Inspire,” a collection of 10 short segments (each under three minutes) focused on different pieces in the museum’s collection and narrated by the DIA’s passionate and enthusiastic curators. They cover art from around the world and from the ancient world to today.
Discover the power of the Babylonian Mushhushshu-dragon and find out why this Nail Figure is considered the most important object in the DIA’s African gallery.
Gain deeper insight into Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry Murals, which focus on the Ford River Rouge factory in the 1930s. As DIA Curator of American Art Benjamin Colman notes, Rivera “shows us a racially integrated workforce…using an optimistic gaze to show the world as he wanted it to be, rather than the world he saw when he came to Detroit.”
See why Vincent van Gogh’s colorful Self-Portrait was a breakaway moment for the Dutch artist. “His work prior to this did not look anything like this; It was much more realistic,” says Jill Shaw, Head of Modern and Contemporary Art at the DIA. Another fun fact: “Van Gogh didn’t have a lot of funds to hire models to sit for him... So, he painted or drew himself about 40 times.”
You’ll also meet two amazing women artists: one of the most renowned painters of the Italian Baroque period and a little-known artist who developed her own style of Cubism in a very male-dominated era.
Whether you’re stepping into a gallery you’ve never explored before or revisiting an old favorite, these audio stops offer a fresh way to explore the DIA collection, one story at a time.
Download the app or check out the “Artworks to Inspire” online:
Mushhushshu-dragon, Ancient Babylonian (7th–6th century BCE)
Peacock-shaped Incense Burner, late 15th–mid 16th century
Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith and Her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes, ca.1623–1625
Frederick Edwin Church, Cotopaxi, 1862
Vincent van Gogh, Self-Portrait, 1887
Nail Figure, bet. 1875–1900
Diego Rivera, Detroit Industry Murals, 1932–1933
Joseph (Paa Joe) Tetteh Ashong, Car-shaped Coffin, 2018
Ik-Joong Kang, Happy World - Scattered Crumbs, 2011–2014
Maria Blanchard, Saxophonist, ca. 1919
