Presented in conjunction with the focus exhibition Guests of Honor: Armor as Fashion (on view through April 26, 2026), this lecture will introduce the 17th-century knight, diplomat, and art collector Jean de Croÿ. Dr. Chassica Kirchhoff, Assistant Curator of European Sculpture & Decorative Arts, will explore Croÿ’s self-presentation within the glittering world of the Spanish Habsburg court.

In addition to Croÿ’s story, Dr. Kirchhoff will share the complex, intersecting histories of his portrait by Juan van der Hamen y Léon and the surviving elements of the spectacular, gilded armor featured in the painting.

This program, hosted by the Visiting Committee for European Sculpture and Decorative Arts on the occasion of its Annual Meeting, is free, open to the public, and presented with live American Sign Language interpretation.

Join us for a special Member Lecture with curator Denene De Quintal.

Join us for a special Member Lecture for Contemporary Anishinaabe Art: A Continuation with artist and speaker Jonathon Thunder.

Join us for The Art & Culture of Eating, a special evening featuring Jamila Robinson, editor-in-chief of Bon Appétit and Epicurious and one of today's most influential voices at the intersection of food, art and culture.

A native Detroiter who grew up visiting the DIA, Robinson brings visionary leadership to food media, shaping conversations that explore how food expresses identity, tells stories, and brings communities together.

In this intimate on-stage conversation with Rochelle Riley, longtime journalist and Director of Arts and Culture for the City of Detroit, she'll reflect on the cultural influences that inspire her, the dual role food plays as sustenance and entertainment, and explore the creative overlap between food, art and community.

Audience Q&A will follow the conversation.

Presented with American Sign Language interpretation

Katie Hornstein is a professor of art history at Dartmouth College and the author of Picturing War in France (Yale, 2018) and, more recently, Myth and Menagerie: Seeing Lions in the Nineteenth Century (Yale, 2024). A collection she co-edited with Daniel Harkett, Animal Modernities: Images, Objects, Histories, is forthcoming from Leuven University Press in 2025.

A specialist in the long nineteenth century, Katie’s current work engages with contemporary debates in art history and the humanities more broadly, including post-humanism, the intertwined logics of empire and ecological destruction, and the representation and uses of non-human animal bodies in modern material and visual culture. She is currently developing a new project dedicated to carrier pigeons and their expansive labors in service to humans.

Katie received her B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, and her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.

Join Ngoc Minh Ngo (author and photographer) and Ivan Shaw (Corporate Photography Director at Condé Nast) for a conversation about her career and lifelong engagement with flowers and gardens. Ngo’s work has appeared in The World of Interiors, T Magazine, Vogue, and Architectural Digest, and she is the author of three books: Bringing Nature Home, In Bloom: Creating and Living with Flowers, and Eden Revisited: A Garden in Northern Morocco, each featuring her own photography.

Ngo will also discuss her latest publication, Roses in the Garden. The inspiration for this series and book came from her father, a former colonel in the Vietnamese army and avid gardener who settled with their family in California in the 1970s. In his final days, Ngo tended his garden in hopes he would see his roses bloom one last time. After his passing, she returned to Brooklyn, New York, where she lives, volunteered at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and began photographing rose cuttings. What started as a personal meditation grew into a series exploring the rose’s cultural and historical significance, culminating in a book celebrating the iconic flower and the renowned gardens where it thrives.

Presented with American Sign Language interpretation

Image: Ngoc Minh Ngo, Ninfa Garden, Italy, 2022. Courtesy of the artist. (c) Ngoc Minh Ngo, 2025.

Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment

Dr. Mary Morton, Curator and Head of French Painting, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Last year marked the 100th anniversary of the groundbreaking 1874 exhibition in Paris, widely regarded as the birth of Impressionism. In this lecture, Dr. Mary Morton will share new insights from her recent scholarship, examining the social, political, and cultural forces that shaped this pivotal moment in France. She’ll explore how the artists we now call Impressionists responded to the world around them — and how their work fit within a broader, dynamic artistic landscape, where they exhibited alongside the official French Salon.

The Lecture is presented as Bonnie Ann Larson Modern European Artists Series Lecture.

Image: Claude Monet, Impression, Sunrise, 1872, oil on canvas, Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris.

The DIA's Friends of Modern and Contemporary Art presents a conversation on urban renewal with scholars Esther da Costa Meyer and Lauren Hood. During the second half of the 19th century, Paris underwent a radical transformation which provided a model for urban renewal, widely accepted in its day, while at the same time dramatically increasing social inequality. Considering the urban past and present of Paris and Detroit, Da Costa Meyer and Hood will discuss how the impulse to modernize impacts local communities.

Esther da Costa Meyer is Professor emerita, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University, and the author of Dividing Paris: Urban Renewal and Social Inequality, 1852–1870.

Lauren Hood is Assistant Professor of Practice in Urban and Regional Planning at University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning and the Founder and Chief Visionary of the Institute for AfroUrbanism (IAU), a global think tank exploring the conditions for Black thriving.

Presented with American Sign Language interpretation.

This event is sponsored by the Friends of Modern and Contemporary Art. A private reception for FMCA members will follow the lecture. Become an FMCA member to access special members-only experiences.

Photo: Aerial view of Paris, ca. 1870

25th Annual Elizabeth Sites Kuhlman Lecture featuring Daniel Santamaria, floral artisan from Spain and Creative Director at the Escola Disseny Floral I Paisatgisme de Barcelona.

Optional luncheon immediately following the lecture.

Running the Gamut? Recent Acquisitions of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts for the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Dr. Jack Hinton will present the (sometimes dizzying!) range of acquisitions made by the Philadelphia Museum of Art in recent years in the areas of European sculpture and decorative arts. A focus on selected highlights will reveal curatorial strategies to deepen historical context and broaden representation across collections, and the impact these additions have on the museum’s installations and programs.

The DIA’s Visiting Committee for European Sculpture and Decorative Arts (VCESDA) auxiliary group sponsors programs and lectures that celebrate decorative arts and sculpture in all their variety. This free springtime lecture will offer insights into the ways that one of the DIA’s most prominent peer museums is expanding its collection and the stories it shares with visitors.

Hinton is Henry P. McIlhenny Curator of European Decorative Arts and Sculpture at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA). He studied Histories of Art and Design at the Courtauld Institute of Art, the Royal College of Art, and the Victoria & Albert Museum. A distinguished specialist in Renaissance decorative arts, he has spent over 20 years researching and presenting the PMA’s world-class collection of more than 22,000 objects made in diverse media from the Middle Ages to the present day.