Fashioned around 1695 and attributed to Gottfried Wolffram, the DIA’s amber casket exemplifies the early modern practice of using materials from formerly living organisms and the inorganic materials whose extraction adversely affected the environment. Comprising amber, ivory, wood, velvet, paper, gold, and brass, the casket's diverse materials not only showcase artistic versatility but also hint at environmental impacts in regions like Prussia, Lithuania, Sweden, East Africa, and the Americas. 

Contrasting sharply with our contemporary, often limited grasp of the origins, processing, and assembly of materials, early modern craftspeople and the European elites had a far deeper understanding of artifacts’ structural logic and their constituent materials. This tacit knowledge, increasingly recognized as “material literacy,” profoundly shaped the interpretation and appreciation of art. With this backdrop, Dr. Tomasz Grusiecki will investigate how early modern Europeans understood the materials that make up the DIA’s casket. He will examine the range of responses elicited by the scarcity, abundance, and ecological implications of various artistic media. Investigating the materials’ relationship to the natural world, as well as their extraction, refinement, and recycling, this lecture will provide insights into how environmental concerns of the period endowed art with added meaning and value. 

About the lecturer: Dr. Tomasz Grusiecki is Associate Professor of Early Modern European Art and Material Cultures at Boise State University. His research encompasses early modern cultural entanglements, European perceptions of the wider world, eco-critical examinations of artistic materials, and zoopolitics of art-making, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe from 1500 to 1700. He is the author of Transcultural Things and the Spectre of Orientalism in Early Modern Poland-Lithuania (Manchester University Press, 2023). 

 
Photo: Courtly amber casket, ca. 1695, attributed to Gottfried Wolffram. Collection: Detroit Institute of Arts, Museum Purchase, Robert H. Tannahill Foundation Fund.

The Detroit Institute of Arts invites you to join us for the inaugural Byron and Dorothy Gerson Lecture Series, in partnership with the William Davidson Foundation. Franklin Sirmans, director of the Perez Art Museum Miami will present on the topic; A View from the Crossroads: A 21st Century American Museum.

This talk will explore the recent history of the Pérez Art Museum Miami. Working with modern and contemporary art, the museum has sought to be a leader in presenting the work of Latin America and the Caribbean while highlighting African diasporic and US Latino art. This talk will present artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Marisol, Warhol, Leandro Erlich and exhibitions like NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith and Futbol: The Beautiful Game.

Black men and women figure prominently in many of William Sidney Mount’s paintings, most of which are based on people and places on the north shore of eastern Long Island, New York, where Mount was born and lived most of his life.

Bruce Robertson, professor emeritus of art history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, will focus on Robin Mills, the model for the Black man standing outside the barn in Mount’s famous The Power of Music.

Although the Black man in Mount’s painting is denied full participation in the activity within the barn, his substantial presence reveals, perhaps inadvertently, the substantiality of Mill’s place in Mount’s community, and hints at the agency of rural Black people like Mills who agitated to end slavery and gain full civil rights.

The Power of Music, 1847. William Sidney Mount (American, 1807–1868). Oil on canvas; framed: 67 x 78 x 7.5 cm (26 3/8 x 30 11/16 x 2 15/16 in.); unframed: 43.4 x 53.5 cm (17 1/16 x 21 1/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund 1991.110

Join us for a public lecture with award-winning photojournalist Alan Chin as he shares his story, “Home and Away: A Photographer’s Journey Through Conflict and Culture.”

Chin will discuss his experiences as a photojournalist working in China, the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Central Asia, and Ukraine, as well as the US. Copies of his book Infinity Goes Up on Trial will be available for purchase and signing.

This lecture is sponsored by the DIA's Friends of Prints, Drawings and Photographs.

The Friends of African and African American Art will present the 31st Annual Alain Locke Awards to artist Nari Ward.

Ward will receive the Alain Locke International Award for his creation of sculptural installations over the past 40 years made from discarded material found and collected. He recontextualizes this material in thought-provoking juxtapositions that convey complex metaphorical meanings to confront social and political realities surrounding race, migration, democracy, and community. Currently he is the distinguished professor and head of studio art at Hunter College in New York.

The Alain Locke Recognition Award will be received by Linda and David Whitaker, renowned collectors of African and African American Art who often generously share their knowledge of this endeavor with the community.  

A reception will follow the awards event.
 

Join Dr. Peter Bell, curator of European Paintings, Sculpture & Drawings at the Cincinnati Art Museum, in an insightful look at the bronze statuette during the Renaissance.

The independent bronze statuette emerged in the second half of the 15th century in central and northern Italy as a type of art object prized in court and university circles. Its proliferation in the decades around 1500 is a hallmark of the Italian Renaissance.

The meaningful confluence of material, size, and subject in the Renaissance bronze statuette, and its unique relationship to its beholder, is beautifully illustrated by four of the earliest and most celebrated statuettes. On loan from the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence, they are the focus of an exceptional exhibition at the DIA, on view through March 3, 2024. 

This lecture is free with registration and open to all DIA visitors!
 

Thank you for your interest. This event is sold out.

Join us for a panel discussion with Detroit artists Sydney James, Hubert Massey, and Mario Moore, co-organized by Cranbrook Art Museum and the Detroit Institute of Arts, with introductions by Laura Mott, chief curator, Cranbrook Art Museum, and Katie Pfohl, associate curator, Contemporary Art, Detroit Institute of Arts. 

Organized to accompany Cranbrook Art Museum’s exhibition Skilled Labor: Black Realism in Detroit, on view through March 3, 2024, this discussion will take place in the DIA’s Rivera Court, the location of Diego Rivera’s iconic Detroit Industry Murals.  

The Detroit Industry Murals are a hallmark of the DIA and the city of Detroit, and have influenced generations of artists, particularly those who are part of Detroit’s vibrant contemporary mural movement. During this discussion, James, Massey, and Moore will discuss Rivera’s enduring influence on mural practice in Detroit.

A symbol of creative vibrancy for the city, contemporary mural work also raises questions of representation, equity, and ownership connected to Rivera’s explorations of labor and industry almost a century ago. This vital dialogue among artists will explore how mural work continues to shape Detroit’s artistic and cultural landscape. 

Image: Hubert Massey, Sketch for Detroit-Crossroad of Innovation (in process). Courtesy of Dr. Hubert Massey. 

Member Lecture for Regeneration: Black Cinema, 1989-1971, more details to come.

Image: 

The Nicholas Brothers in a scene from Stormy Weather (1943), from left, Fayard Nicholas and Harold Nicholas. Photographic print, gelatin silver. Courtesy Margaret Herrick Library. ©Twentieth Century Fox.

Member Lecture for Regeneration: Black Cinema, 1989-1971, more details to come.

Image: 

The Nicholas Brothers in a scene from Stormy Weather (1943), from left, Fayard Nicholas and Harold Nicholas. Photographic print, gelatin silver. Courtesy Margaret Herrick Library. ©Twentieth Century Fox.

Join frame historian Tracy Gill, co-founder of New York’s Gill & Lagodich Fine Period Frames, who will discuss the evolution of frame styles over two centuries of American art. 

Drawing on examples from DIA’s collection, Gill will survey changing tastes from 17th-century painted frames and gilded hand-carved fancies to innovative 19th-century trends and opulent models from the Gilded Age. She will discuss the artist-designed frames on James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s Arrangement in Gray: Portrait of the Painter and the monumental landscapes of Frederic Church, as well as the elegant frames designed by architect Stanford White to house paintings owned by Detroit collector Charles Freer. Finally, Gill will explore the early 20th-century transition to handcraftsmanship, when American Impressionist painters were inspired to commission custom frames from Arts and Crafts artisans, and the progression to deceptively simple surrounds conceived by modernists such as Florine Stettheimer, Arthur Dove, and Georgia O’Keeffe, who pushed the boundaries of their canvases and rejected traditional gilded frames in favor of pared-down profiles finished in white, silver, and hand-painted or textured wood. 

Through this talk, attendees will join Gill in looking not just at the paintings, but the art around the art — the art of the frame. 

Special thanks to the Ida and Conrad H. Smith Fund.