The European Paintings Council (EPC) will host a lecture with special guest Dr. Diane Bodart. Dr. Bodart is the David Rosand Associate Professor of Italian Renaissance Art History and Director of Undergraduate Studies at Columbia University.

Join Dr. Frank Feltens to learn about a celebrated pair of Japanese painted folding screens, their Detroit history, and the innovative technology now making them accessible to new audiences. In 1906, industrialist and collector Charles Lang Freer acquired Waves at Matsushima by Tawaraya Sotatsu (active ca. 1600–43) and displayed them in his Detroit home.

After his death in 1919, his collection traveled to Washington, DC, to form the Freer Gallery of Art (now part of the National Museum of Asian Art, NMAA), the Smithsonian’s first art museum. Recently, Canon, Inc., the Kyoto Culture Association, and NMAA have created stunning high-resolution reproductions of these screens, using a combination of advanced technology and traditional craft.

These facsimiles, created by the Tsuzuri Project, can travel to locations in Japan and beyond, fulfilling Freer’s and the museum’s goal of cross-cultural understanding between Asia and America through the arts.

Frank Feltens is Curator of Japanese Art at the National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution. A native of Germany, he received his PhD in art history from Columbia University. He is a specialist in Japanese painting with a particular focus on the late medieval and early modern eras. 

This lecture is sponsored by the Detroit Institute of Arts’ Friends of Asian Arts and Cultures, the Freer House, and the Japan-America Society of Michigan and Southwestern Ontario. Additional support comes from Wayne State University, the Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute, the National Association of Japan-America Societies, the United States-Japan Foundation, and the US-Japan Foundation Curators’ Perspective. 

Celebrate the DIA donation of the Sidney R. Knafel Collection of French Faience with special guest Camille LePrince, expert and dealer specializing in French and Italian ceramics. This public lecture is open to all DIA members and museum visitors.

This lecture is hosted by the Visiting Committee of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts Auxiliary group.

For the last decade, Tres Souls—Rocio Mendoza, Roberto Carlos, and Jesus Martinez—have serenaded Los Angeles audiences with their interpretation of bolero, a musical genre that draws from the 1940s “golden era” of Mexican cinema as well as popular recordings from the 1950s and 1960s.

Each member of the trio is an accomplished musician, and each inherited the knowledge and importance of Mexican heritage music through their family and the generations before them.

In their own way, Tres Souls are following in the footsteps of other “Trio Romanticos," such as Eydie Gorme Y Los Panchos, Los Tres Reyes and Los Tres Ases, while interspersing musical influences that can be heard throughout the Los Angeles diaspora.
 

Join us for a public lecture and book signing with Los Angeles–based artist Awol Erizku. Born in Gondar, Ethiopia, in 1988, Erizku attended Cooper Union before receiving his MFA from Yale. He developed a multi-disciplinary practice encompassing photography, sculpture, painting, installation, film, and sound.

Referring to and reimagining African and Black American cultures from Nefertiti to hip-hop vernacular, Erizku rejects Eurocentric notions of art and beauty in favor of building his singular Afrocentric aesthetic, something he refers to as “Afro-esotericism.”

Following the lecture, Erizku will sign copies of his most recent publication Awol Erizku: Mystic Parallax, the first comprehensive monograph of his career to date.

This program is sponsored by Lisa Applebaum and the Friends of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs auxiliary group.

nathan trice / RITUALS: dance, theater, music company presents its Recognizing Women Project.  A monthly first Friday community workshop series that invites the Detroit community to join a creative process that uses storytelling, dance, theater & music to illustrate the wisdom, power and passion of the women that have touched our lives.

Friday, December 1, 6-8 p.m.
Friday, January 5, 6-8 p.m.

Who can participate? 

Daughters, sons, mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers, great-grandmothers, great-grandfathers… anyone who knows a woman is invited to participate.

How to participate? 

Share your stories & perspectives during our monthly workshops.

Want to be a part of our culminating March 22, 2024 performances? 

Join the monthly workshops and rehearsals.

Nathan Trice is a native Detroiter, Veteran, Artistic Director, Anti-Racist organizer and Inter-Faith practitioner.

Learn more about Nathan Trice here

Space is limited and registration is required.

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 and up (children ages 12 and younger should be accompanied by an adult). 

Cézanne's Other: Hortense Fiquet Cézanne, as Painted by Her Husband, Paul

Speaker: Susan Sidlauskas, Distinguished Professor of the History and Theory of Modern Art at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey 
 
Paul Cézanne painted more portraits of his wife, Hortense, than any other sitter—the Detroit Institute of Arts boasts one in its collection. But these paintings have not often received attention. Compared to the sensual appeal and beauty of his apples in his still lifes and his landscapes, the portraits were viewed as “unattractive” or “uninteresting.”

Cézanne produced most of the paintings of Hortense during his period of greatest experimentation, allowing us to track the ways in which he remade the modern portrait. Indeed, this lecture will demonstrate audience that Hortense was Cézanne’s most significant “other.” 

This event is part of the DIA's Bonnie Ann Larson Modern European Artists Series.

The DFT welcomes back Little Bang Theory to perform a new score for Victor Sjostrom’s great silent film The Wind, made in 1928 and starring the incredible Lillian Gish as Letty Mason, a young woman who travels to a barren West Texas town and becomes enmeshed with rival lovers and jealous friends; all the while haunted by the never-ending wind that blows through the town.

Little Bang Theory is the brainchild of Detroit avant-garde music legend Frank Pahl, who with Terry Sarris and Doug Shimmin, form a mini-orchestra of bells, whistles and toy musical instruments that bring to life the timeless art of silent cinema. 
 

Odu Afrobeat Orchestra, led by saxophonist Baba BG, is comprised of Detroit’s best world music artists who deliver nothing short of a spiritual experience with every performance.

Odu is one of 256 divinatory principals In Yoruba spirituality associated with a traditional ancient verse; the term “Afrobeat” refers to the rhythms pioneered by late Nigerian superstar Fela Kuti, who used them as a means of expressing political and social messages through his music.