To celebrate our return to the DIA, Kenneth Myers, the DIA’s Byron and Dorothy Gerson Curator of American Art, will give us an update on Covid-era acquisitions by artists such as Marsden Hartley and Arthur Dove.

Ken’s talk will start at 6:30 p.m. in the Lecture Hall. The lecture is free and open to the public. 

This event, from the Associates of the American Wing auxiliary, is sponsored by the Ida and Conrad H. Smith Fund.

To celebrate our return to the DIA, Kenneth Myers, the DIA’s Byron and Dorothy Gerson Curator of American Art, will give us an update on Covid-era acquisitions, including the major work pictured above. Ken’s talk will start at 6:30 p.m. in the Lecture Hall. The lecture is free and open to the public.

For participating AAW members, cocktails will begin at 5:30 p.m. in the Great Hall, with dinner in Rivera Court following the lecture at 7:30 p.m.

Please RSVP for the dinner by Thursday, September 15, 2022.

This event, from the Associates of the American Wing auxiliary, is sponsored by the Ida and Conrad H. Smith Fund.

The Friends of African and African American Art will present its 2022 Margaret Herz Demant Award for African Art to Professor Benedict O. Oramah, President and Chairman of the Board of Directors of African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank). 

Please join us on Sunday, September 25th, for an award ceremony honoring Professor Oramah for his contributions to promoting and collecting African art, both in Africa and internationally. Professor Oramah oversees Afreximbank's Art Program, which acts as a patron for the preservation, collection, and showcasing of African art in the Bank's corporate offices and promotes the visibility and commercial viability of Africa's contemporary artists through planned art-related activities. To date, Afreximbank has built a pipeline of finance focused on creative and cultural industry projects—classical and contemporary art, fashion, music, and art training--to the tune of $500 million.  

Professor Oramah's talk will focus on how Afreximbank's programs are bolstering the creative industries in Africa through strategic investment. He believes that with suitable investments, the arts have the potential to contribute to the structural transformation of the continent, thereby creating jobs and increasing exports and other development outcomes. He will also explore how the current programs can benefit the promotion and exhibition of works by African artists in the Diaspora. 

This event is open to the public; however, seating is limited, and advance registration is required. 

Proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test as well as masks are required to attend events in the Lecture Hall. 

View the Invitation

2022 Gala Sponsors

Gold 

• Lisa and Bill Ford  
• Christine and John Giampetroni  
• Friends of the DIA 

Silver 

• Lindsey and Tom Buhl  
• Joanne Danto and Arnold Weingarden 
• Marvin and Betty Danto Family Foundation 
• Cynthia and Edsel Ford
• Carolynn and Aaron Frankel 
• Nicole and Matt Lester  
• Richard and Jane Manoogian Foundation  
• Christine and David Provost 

Bronze 

• Lynn and Paul Alandt  
• Chevy Chase Trust  
• DTE Foundation  
• Fisher Dynamics
• Lawrence P. Fisher, II 
• Elena Ford and Mitchell Seldin
• Mrs. William Clay Ford
• Ford Motor Company Fund  
• Erica and Ralph Gerson
• Henry Ford Health, Denise Brooks-Williams and Jeffrey Williams  
• Honigman LLP   
• Linda Dresner Levy and Ed Levy, Jr.
• Don Manvel
• Mr. and Mrs. Peter C. Morse
• Stacy and Greg Renker  
• Tracy and Fritz Souder  
• Burton A. and Sandra D. Zipser Foundation 

Supporter

• Mrs. Anne Ford
• Barbara and David Veverka

2022 Gala Chairs

• Denise Brooks-Williams and Jeffrey Williams 
• Lindsey and Tom Buhl 
• Joanne Danto and Arnold Weingarden 
• Christine and John Giampetroni  

Conversation with Jill Shaw, Josien van Gogh, and Janne Heling

• September 30

Join organizing curator Jill Shaw, Head of The James Pearson Duffy Department of Modern and Contemporary Art and Rebecca A. Boylan and Thomas W. Sidlik Curator of European Art (1850–1970) at the Detroit Institute of Arts, in conversation with Josien van Gogh, great-grandniece of Vincent van Gogh, and her daughter Janne Heling, chair of the Vincent van Gogh Foundation

Creating Van Gogh in America

• October 1

Learn how this exhibition came together and get behind-the-scenes perspectives with organizing curator Jill Shaw, Head of The James Pearson Duffy Department of Modern and Contemporary Art and the Rebecca A. Boylan and Thomas W. Sidlik Curator of European Art (1850–1970) at the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Opportunity for all DIA members to self-tour the exhibition, Van Gogh in America. Use your FREE member tickets during Member Preview Days, Member Mondays or throughout the run of the exhibition.

In the aftermath of World War II, Ypsilanti-based designer Preston Tucker (Jeff Bridges) was quick to realize that over the four years during which Detroit’s Big Three had forsaken individual automobile production to focus on the war effort, Americans had developed a voracious appetite for new cars. Tucker’s answer was to independently create an innovative “car of the future,” featuring pioneering safety features and modern streamlined styling, including a center-mounted “cyclops” headlight that turned with the vehicle.

It’s easy to see why the Detroit-born Francis Ford Coppola was drawn to this story of one man’s vision and unwavering determination; many of Coppola’s own independent productions —not to mention his brilliant Godfather saga—can be seen as parallel portraits of American dreamers. (110 minutes) 

“Francis Coppola's heartfelt tribute to Preston Tucker turns out to be one of his most personal and successful movies.”  –Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader 

“An elegiac corollary to the fiery documentaries that captured Hong Kong's recent protest movement, Chan Tze Woon's Blue Island looks at the state of the region in the wake of the 2020 national security law, an era where many pro-democracy protesters have either fled into exile or are sitting in custody. Explicitly hybrid in its approach, the film not only blurs narrative and documentary, but also the years of 2019 to 2021 with a longer history of Hong Kong as a site of refuge. 

The film incorporates staged sequences in which the young protest leaders of today―many of whom are awaiting sentencing for speaking out―are daringly cast in the roles of student leaders from 1989 and earlier. Timely and resonant, Blue Island grapples honestly with the fact that Hong Kong as we once knew it is no more.” –Jesse Cumming, HotDocs Festival, Toronto.

In Yue Chinese (Cantonese), English and Mandarin with English subtitles. (97 minutes)

“Political bravery and aesthetic daring... Urgent, remarkable, genre-defying.” –Museum of Modern Art

"Dead on arrival. Or not? The present state of crypto and the future prospects for NFTs"

Not only has the weather this summer been scorching, to a record extent; but also, the crypto and NFT markets have experienced a commensurate meltdown. The naysayers are wagging their collective fingers and gleefully retorting in response to the recent barrage of NFT hype in a chorus of “We told you so!” But, to paraphrase Mark Twain: the death of NFTs is greatly exaggerated. Why the nascent market for digital art will outlive the current decline and rebound in rude health, sooner than you think.  

Kenny Schachter has been curating contemporary art shows in museums and galleries while teaching art history and economics for more than thirty years between Switzerland and the United States. Schachter has a column on Artnet.com and contributes to various international publications, including the New York Magazine and The Times Magazine (UK).

After making digital art for decades, Schachter has spearheaded the traditional art world’s adaptation of Non Fungible Tokens in 2020-1 by lecturing at Harvard Law School, Art Institute of Chicago, Yale and the Hirschhorn Museum and writing a series of feature articles on the subject. In 2021, he curated wide-ranging NFTism exhibitions (a term he trademarked) at Nagel Draxler in Cologne, Institut in London. An interview with Arturo Galinsino, director of Florence’s Palazzo Strozzi Museum and Schachter was published in a book on the occasion of the exhibit Let’s Get Digital in 2022.

Schachter had a retrospective of his art at Joel Mesler’s Rental Gallery in New York in the summer of 2018, curated a show at Simon Lee Gallery in London (Fall 2018) and a solo show at Kantor Gallery in LA (Feb. 2019). He recently had a show with Eva Beresin at Galerie Charim in Vienna (May 2021) and participated in Art Basel 2021/22  on multiple occasions with Nagel Draxler Gallery. In addition, Schachter inaugurated the first one-person exhibit in Nagel Draxler’s Crypto Kiosk Gallery in Berlin between January - March 2022. He is the subject of a documentary under the production and direction of Chris Smith (Tiger King/Fyre Festival) and a Hulu/ABC NFT film. Schachter lives in New York.

Divorced photographer Mahmut finds his life of solitary routine is interrupted when Yusuf, a distant cousin from his remote village, shows up without warning to stay in Mahmut’s tiny Istanbul apartment until he can find work. The job doesn’t materialize, but instead of leveling with his host, Yusuf invents a series of scenarios in hopes of prolonging his stay; the result is a subtly comic psychological dance that can’t help but suggest an austere yet witty Turkish tribute to Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple.

Released 20 years ago but unavailable for theatrical exhibition for years, Distant—written, directed, photographed, produced and co-edited by Nuri Bilge Ceylan—was awarded the coveted Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. In Turkish with English subtitles. (110 minutes)

“Remarkable! A Chekhovian tale of major artistic power… Genuinely beautiful and haunting.” –Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune