Events Calendar

Bring the beauty of winter indoors by making old-fashioned paper snowflakes. Perfect for adding a handmade touch to your seasonal decor.

Create a pencil drawing to take home while taking a closer look at the collection. No experience is necessary. All supplies provided. For ages 6 - Adult (children ages 12 and younger should be accompanied by an adult). Capacity is limited.

Two revolutionary musicians join forces to create extreme possibility! Rob Schwimmer is a triple-threat composer-pianist, thereminist, and Haken Continuum player who has performed and recorded throughout the world. 

Create a pencil drawing to take home while taking a closer look at the collection. No experience necessary. All supplies are provided. For ages 6 and up (children 12 and younger should be accompanied by an adult). Capacity is limited.

Use fabric, yarn, and felt to transform a tongue depressor into a character ready for its own puppet show! Get creative as you design and bring your puppet to life, adding personality and charm with every detail.

Enjoy National Marionette Theatre’s adaptation of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf—a beloved classic that has enchanted audiences since its 1936 premiere, following the adventures of a boy determined to capture a wolf. The artists of the National Marionette Theatre bring this symphonic fairy tale to life with exquisitely crafted marionettes, scrolling scenery, and Prokofiev’s timeless orchestral score.

For all ages.

USA/1926 — directed by William Beaudine | 109 min.

By 1926, Canadian-born film actress Mary Pickford (1892–1979) had become the most powerful woman in Hollywood—celebrated onscreen for her “luminous tenderness and gutter ferocity” (Photoplay, 1916), and behind the camera as a shrewd businesswoman and co-founder of United Artists Studio.

USA/1925 — directed by Buster Keaton | 88 min.

Filmed on location in the Arizona desert, Go West stars Keaton as a young Midwestern man named Friendless, who takes the advice of newspaper publisher Horace Greeley and hops a freight train bound for the West.

There he befriends a dairy cow named Brown Eyes, and together they look out for one another while evading wolves, train robbers, and a one-way trip to the stockyards.

Explore endless patterns and colors by layering tissue paper onto a simple glass jar, which you can later illuminate at home with a small candle, such as a tea light.

Create a pencil drawing to take home while taking a closer look at the collection. No experience necessary and all supplies are provided. For ages 6 to adult (children 12 and younger should be accompanied by an adult). Capacity is limited.

Artist trading cards are miniature works of art created on 2½ x 3½  inch card stock. Make your own card to trade with friends.

See "The Rooster's Crow" Automaton Clock come to life in the DIA's European Medieval & Renaissance galleries during its once-monthly day of operation! Throughout the day, visitors can see this rare 16th-century clock's mechanical rooster flap its wings and open its beak every fifteen minutes, and witness the figures of seven princes parade around an enthroned emperor as the clock strikes each hour.

Heraldry emerged during the Middle Ages as a way to visually represent lords and knights. Learn more as you create a miniature coat of arms of your own design.

Create a pencil drawing to take home while taking a closer look at the collection. No experience necessary and all supplies are provided. For ages 6 to adult (children 12 and younger should be accompanied by an adult). Capacity is limited.

Nellie McKay has released a diverse collection of critically acclaimed albums, with songs that range from jazz to pop to the delightfully undefinable. Her current projects include her latest release, Hey Guys, Watch This—created with The Carpenter Ants and inspired by the soulful sounds of West Virginia—and her forthcoming album, The Get Away From Me Demos, on Omnivore Records.

Experience the highlights of the Detroit Institute of Arts on a free, guided tour with American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation.

Explore some of the museum’s most beloved works of art while learning about the stories, history, and artists behind them.

Tours meet in the Great Hall at 1 p.m. and last approximately 45 to 60 minutes.

Use rubber stamps and fabric markers to give your own personal meaning to a decorated piece of silk fabric. 

Create a pencil drawing to take home while taking a closer look at the collection. No experience necessary and all supplies are provided. For ages 6 to adult (children 12 and younger should be accompanied by an adult). Capacity is limited.

The Michigan Philharmonic once again joins forces with the Detroit Institute of Arts to present Miniature Masterpieces, featuring intimate music performed in the DIA’s Rivera Court. 

Please join us for this educator-exclusive morning of relaxation and refreshment. Detroit Yoga Lab will lead a yoga session in the historic Rivera Court, no experience necessary. Participants will also enjoy a complimentary smoothie bar and an art-making session.

All educators are welcome. Dress comfortably and bring a yoga mat or thick blanket.

This Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, the DIA is proud to present Community Sing: Songs of Civil Rights, a participatory concert celebrating the power of music to unite people of all ages, backgrounds, and experiences. Whether you’re a seasoned vocalist or simply love to sing along, everyone is invited to raise their voice. 

In celebration of the 45th anniversary of Detroit’s Creative Arts Collective and its association with the Detroit Institute of Arts, the PUBLIQuartet will perform a composition by George Lewis, Professor of American Music and Chair of Composition at Columbia University. 

The piece, commissioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation at the Library of Congress, will be performed by the PUBLIQuartet alongside members of the Creative Arts Collective.

The Detroit Institute of Arts and the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation have teamed to host our first joint STEAM educator workshop! Participants in this workshop will learn about everything both institutions offer teachers and students, including field trips, professional development opportunities, learning resources, and more.

Harlem Remixed is an electrifying concert experience where the sounds of the Harlem Renaissance collide with contemporary hits. Through tight harmonies, awe-inspiring choreography, and mashups that blend jazz with modern melodies, Mosaic’s young artists bring new life to the iconic music that shaped history.

Dom Flemons & The Traveling Wildfires is a brand-new Black string band supergroup created and led by Grammy Award-winning musician, American Banjo Hall of Fame inductee, and co-founder of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Dom Flemons. 

A welcoming, inclusive art-making experience for neurodivergent children, teens, adults, and their families and friends. Each session features a thoughtfully designed project in a comfortable, supportive environment.

This session’s project: Instant Photo Collages

Join Haitian-American performer Emmanuel Elpenord for a unique double feature of interactive storytelling and puppetry that blends imagination with cultural roots.

This lecture explores Louis XIV’s Savonnerie carpets—woven for the Galerie d’Apollon and Grande Galerie of the Louvre—one of the most ambitious and enigmatic masterpieces of the Baroque era. Commissioned on a grand scale, The King’s Carpet (le tapis du roi) consisted of 92 individual pieces designed to cover the entire span of the Louvre’s Grande Galerie—six times the length of the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.

For Brittany Davis, sound is three-dimensional. It has size, shape, color—its own language. “As a blind person, I’ve never had an actual visual experience,” she says. “Sound is the way I’ve always seen my world.”

Brittany brings that world to cinematic life with Images Issues, their full-length debut as a solo artist. Their music showcases an intuitive virtuosity across deeply felt rock, funk, and R&B, blurring boundaries with ease.

A three-time Grammy nominee, ELEW has solidified his place as one of the most electrifying and innovative pianists of his generation. 

Trained in and inspired by European classical counterpoint, he draws on wide-ranging historical references while maintaining the idiosyncratic Afrocentric timing at the core of jazz improvisation. 

Experience the highlights of the Detroit Institute of Arts on a free, guided tour with American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation.

Explore some of the museum’s most beloved works of art while learning about the stories, history, and artists behind them.

Tours meet in the Great Hall at 1 p.m. and last approximately 45 to 60 minutes.

Experience the highlights of the Detroit Institute of Arts on a free, guided tour with American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation.

Explore some of the museum’s most beloved works of art while learning about the stories, history, and artists behind them.

Tours meet in the Great Hall at 1 p.m. and last approximately 45 to 60 minutes.

Experience the highlights of the Detroit Institute of Arts on a free, guided tour with American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation.

Explore some of the museum’s most beloved works of art while learning about the stories, history, and artists behind them.

Tours meet in the Great Hall at 1 p.m. and last approximately 45 to 60 minutes.