The Friends of African & African American Art (FAAAA) will honor Andrew Camden & the late Gayle Shaw Camden with its 2024 Margaret Herz Demant Award for African Art. A program in the Danto Lecture Hall highlighting the Camdens' past and ongoing contributions will conclude with a reception in the FJC Dining Rooms. 

This event is free and open to the public, registration is required. 

• Demant Awards: 2:00 p.m. - 2:45 p.m.
• Reception: 2:45 p.m. - 3:45 p.m.

The exhibition The Art of Dining: Food Culture in the Islamic World, is on view through January 5, 2025 and features works of art from a broad geographical expanse, including Arab, Turkish, Persian, and South Asian regions—and beyond. In this VCESDA-sponsored lecture, Dr. Katherine Kasdorf, DIA associate curator of Arts of Asia and the Islamic World, will highlight the exhibition’s European objects, exploring their connections to artistic and culinary traditions from the Middle East.

This lecture is free with registration. 

Image: Islamic, Spanish, Pharmacy Jar, 1440-1480, tin-glazed earthenware with cobalt and luster. Detroit Institute of Arts, Gift of K. T. Keller, 63.358.

Artist photographer Cara Romero will share a body of work and offer her perspective on conceptualization, process and experiences making photographs for the last 25 years. Looking at the spirit of capturing light and time, Romero brings together intricately woven stories of both individual and collective heritage, intertribal identity and human experience. Pressing for intercultural understanding of contemporary lived experience, Romero’s photographs often check preconceived notions of what Native art is and counters stories of monolith culture and stereotypes perpetuated by mainstream society. Sometimes serious and sometimes whimsical, her work involves magical realism, untold American history, and contemporary visual dialogues of Native peoples and ideas.

Join us for an opportunity to understand how Romero’s art serves as a powerful medium for preserving and evolving indigenous narratives in the contemporary world.

Event is free with registration, and open to the public.

• Lecture (Marvin & Betty Danto Lecture Hall): 6:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.
• Reception (FJC Dining Rooms): 7:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. 

Tour the DIA’s new contemporary exhibit, 7 Mile + Livernois, by artist Tiff Massey. Then, at 7:30 PM, join DJ Shaun J. Wright for dancing and a cash bar in Rivera Court and the Great Hall.

7 Mile + Livernois is Tiff Massey’s new gallery installation, featuring sculptures commissioned by the DIA in conversation with works by other artists from the museum’s collection. Massey’s work reimagines art’s role in the community, offering a vibrant, inclusive view of Detroit. Her art invites us to celebrate collective identity, ancestral flyness, and beauty.

Raised in suburban Chicagoland, Shaun J. Wright spent their teen years immersed in the sounds of house music. During their undergraduate years at Morehouse College, they developed skills as a dancer in the vogue ballroom scene. As a DJ, Wright steadily exhilarates dance floors by weaving live vocals throughout their sets, performing internationally in Berlin, London, Stockholm, Barcelona, and in their hometown of Chicago at the Smart Bar.

This program is free with registration. Capacity is limited, and registration is recommended. DJ Shaun Wright’s set will not be a seated performance.

• Gallery experience: 7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. 
• DJ experience: 7:30 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. 

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

Using the studio work of local artist Amadeus Roy alongside traditional super-massive landscape paintings, participants will explore the natural fluidity of nature to create their own abstract, layered landscapes. They’ll experiment with colorful foam, cardboard, and papers, bringing their artistic vision to life.

This program is made possible by the PNC Foundation

Capture your museum adventures in a DIY art journal—just grab some heavy card stock, paper, and a rubber band, and you're ready to create your masterpiece!  

Create a pencil drawing to take home while taking a closer look at the collection. No experience necessary. All supplies provided. For ages 6 and up (children ages 16 and younger should be accompanied by an adult). Capacity is limited. 

Use your own initials and colorful art materials to create a unique work of art to take home. 

Create a pencil drawing to take home while taking a closer look at the collection. No experience necessary. All supplies provided. For ages 6 and up (children ages 16 and younger should be accompanied by an adult). Capacity is limited.