Inspired by works in the collection including Vincent van Gogh's 1887 Self-Portrait, stop by the DIA Art-Making studio to create your own portrait using oil pastels!

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 16 and younger should be accompanied by an adult). Capacity is limited.

Learn about all the benefits of your membership including curatorial auxiliary groups that support different areas of the collection. Enjoy our Friday night programming, and double discounts in the Museum Shop!

6:30 pm: Welcome & Presentation in Danto Lecture Hall

7:15 pm: Reception in CaféDIA, docent-guided tour of the museum collection

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 16 and younger should be accompanied by an adult).
 

Create a pencil drawing to take home while taking a closer look at the work in the DIA's new installation, Tiff Massey: 7 Mile + Livernois. No experience necessary. All supplies provided. For ages 6 and up (children ages 12 and younger should be accompanied by an adult).

Image: Tiff Massey, (American, b. 1982). Everyday Arsenal, 2018. Steel. Collection of the artist.

Presented with a live piano score performed by David Drazin, this compilation of short films includes animation masterworks by prolific illustrator Winsor McCay (Gertie the Dinosaur, 1903), Lotte Reiniger (Dr. Dolittle and His Animals / 1928), Disney’s Laugh-O-Gram series (Alice’s Wonderland, 1923) and Władysław Starewicz’s amazing stop-motion films made with dried bugs (The Insects Christmas, 1911).

Early silent animation dived fast and deep into visions of fantasy worlds, and gave them uncanny life using ingenious techniques including hand-drawn cell images, shadow and 3D puppet stop-motion photography, multi-plane cameras for achieving painterly effects, and double-exposures that blended two real worlds into something unreal.

Animated Fantasy Shorts of the Silent Era is presented free to DIA audiences as a holiday gift, wrapped with a live piano score performed by David Drazin. For ages 10 and up. Free with museum admission.

Join Iraqi multimedia artist Sadik Kwaish Alfraji and Diana Abouali, Director of the Arab American National Museum, in a conversation about food, memory, and the meaning of home, in conjunction with the exhibition The Art of Dining: Food Culture in the Islamic World, opening at the DIA on September 22, 2024.

Born in Baghdad, Iraq, in 1960, Alfraji has been based in the Netherlands since the 1990s. The Art of Dining features Alfraji’s A Thread of Light Between My Mother’s Fingers and Heaven, a new commission created for this exhibition. Consisting of a large-scale animation, drawings, and photographs, the work explores the artist’s memories of his mother, her homemade bread, and family meals in Baghdad.

Abouali joined the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, in 2019. As director, she has spearheaded projects to update exhibitions, grow the museum’s artist-in-residence program, and strengthen ties to the community, among other initiatives. Born in Toronto, Canada, to Palestinian parents, she has a PhD in Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University and has worked in the museum and cultural heritage sectors in Palestine, Jordan, and the U.S.

This program is co-sponsored by the DIA Friends of Asian Arts and Cultures and Friends of Modern and Contemporary Art.

Jenny Scheinman is an acclaimed violinist and composer who spent years on the downtown NYC music scene, leading both her own bands, as well as working alongside artists ranging from Lucinda Williams to Lou Reed. The New York Times praised her “distinctive vision of American music, suffused with plainspoken beauty and fortified by country, gospel, and melting-pot folk, along with jazz and the blues.” Moving back to the Pacific Northwest, Scheinman was reawakened to the extraordinary biodiversity of the region known as “The Lost Coast” where she was raised, a stretch of earthquake-prone coastline cut off from the main thoroughfares. This would ultimately inspire Scheinman to write and record All Species Parade, an epic double album featuring guitarists Bill Frisell, pianist Carmen Staaf, and bassist Tony Scherr.

Capacity is limited – seating begins 30 minutes prior to performance start.

USA/1922-directed by Alan Dwan

Robin Hood is a silent adventure film produced by and starring Douglas Fairbanks, a swashbuckling adventure based on the tale of the medieval hero Robin Hood, and the first to present elements of the take-from-the-rich and give-to-the-poor legend that became familiar to audiences for decades on. Robin Hood was also the first motion picture to have a Hollywood premiere (at Grauman's Egyptian Theatre) and the most expensive film produced in its day. It remains one of the most exciting and entertaining American films of the silent era and will be even more so when the DFT presents it with a live score composed and played by David Drazin.

For ages 10 and up. (132 min.) Free with museum admission.

“The superlatives that press agents have coined during the past ten years can now be put to profitable use. They can all be wrapped up, in bundles of twelve, and all applied to Douglas Fairbanks’ Robin Hood.” -Robert Sherwood, The New York Herald, 1922

The Detroit Film Theatre will end its 50th Anniversay Season with a holiday gift for DIA visitors; a special matinee screening of Charlie Chaplin’s classic silent film The Circus, presented with a live score composed and performed by virtuoso silent film pianist David Drazin. 

Chaplin’s extraordinary blend of comedy and heart shines as his iconic Tramp stumbles into the ring of a traveling circus and soon becomes the star of the show and falling for a charming equestrian artist along the way. This perfect comedy ranks among Chaplin’s most iconic, with audacious set pieces, close brushes with a lion and a climactic tightrope walk with a company of monkeys. For all ages.

“There's an edge to The Circus that suggests a man gazing deep into the void, laughing at the darkness and urging us to do the same.” -Keith Uhlich, Time Out