The Detroit Institute of Arts has embarked on a groundbreaking transformation, relocating its African American art galleries to a prominent position next to Diego Rivera's iconic Detroit Industry Murals while launching the region's first comprehensive survey of contemporary Indigenous art. This ambitious repositioning reflects the museum's commitment to becoming what philosopher Alain Locke envisioned in 1925 as "an instrument of cultural education" that challenges traditional museum hierarchies and exclusionary practices.
The newly installed permanent collection galleries draw inspiration from Locke's seminal 1925 essay "The Legacy of the Ancestral Arts," written during the height of the Harlem Renaissance. Locke, a prominent philosopher of his era, argued against what he saw as the popular distortion of African American artistic expression, advocating instead for recognition of its "free, exuberant, emotional, sentimental and human" character shaped by the unique African American experience in America. His vision of museums as instruments of repair - correcting misread contexts and releasing cultures from encyclopedic silos - now guides the DIA's approach to exhibition and curation.
Salvador Salort-Pons, the museum's director since 2015, describes this inclusive approach as part of the institution's DNA. "It's part of our DNA, our internal philosophy that we are always looking for different perspectives," he explained during a recent interview. Under his leadership, the museum has consistently sought to reflect Detroit's diverse community, including last year's exhibition "The Art of Dining," which explored food culture in the Islamic world as a nod to nearby Dearborn's significant Arab American population.
The museum's history with African American art spans eight decades, making it among the first museums anywhere to build and exhibit such a collection beginning in 1943. In 2001, the DIA became the first U.S. museum to name a dedicated curator for African American art when it appointed Valerie J. Mercer, who continues to serve as curator and head of African American art. The collection she has helped develop now encompasses roughly 700 works spanning painting, prints, sculpture, and functional arts.
The four reinstalled galleries, officially titled "Reimagine African American Art," chronicle two centuries of Black artistic achievement beginning in the mid-19th century. The exhibition features pioneers like landscape painter Robert S. Duncan and sculptor Edmonia Lewis, who carved out professional spaces in the art world despite systemic barriers. Notable works include Thomas Day's exquisite wood and black horsehair sofa from around 1840, one of the few surviving designs by this important craftsman in public hands.
Mercer emphasizes the importance of providing historical context for these works. "When I came [to the DIA] not much of the African American collection was on view," she recalled. "The museum wanted African Americans to feel that this was their museum as well—that they were seen by it." The exhibition traces the Great Migration and its cultural impact, the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s, and the Civil Rights and Black Arts movements of the postwar era, while also examining Black artists who found more hospitable conditions for artistic growth in Europe.
Among the exhibition's highlights is Charles McGee's "Spectral Rhythms" from the early 1970s, an epic Color Field abstraction featuring luminous musical notes drifting toward an alien horizon. McGee, who lived from 1924 to 2021, embodied the Great Migration experience when his grandparents moved the family from South Carolina to Detroit when he was ten years old, joining what historians recognize as the largest and fastest internal ethnic movement in U.S. history.
The museum's presentation of Edmonia Lewis demonstrates its sophisticated approach to cross-cultural narratives. Born in 1844 to African American and Native American (Mississauga Ojibwe) parents, Lewis created neoclassical sculptures that now appear both in the African American galleries and in "Contemporary Anishinaabe Art: A Continuum." Her works on display include a stately portrait of abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison and a striking bust of Hiawatha, protagonist of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1855 epic poem.
"Contemporary Anishinaabe Art: A Continuum," running through April 5, represents the museum's first comprehensive survey of art from Indigenous inhabitants of the Great Lakes region in three decades. Denene De Quintal, the museum's first curator of Native American art in years, organized the exhibition with an Anishinaabe advisory group—a collaborative approach rarely seen in major museums. "There's a lot of work to do to bring [the museum] up to best practices for exhibiting Native American art in an institution," De Quintal explained.
The exhibition features more than 60 artists whose work challenges popular stereotypes of Native American art. Visitors will find no stylized teepees, Plains bison, or crowded museum cases. Instead, gallery walls painted deep blue and flecked with white evoke moonlight on water, emphasizing the Anishinaabe people's deep connection to the Great Lakes region. Works range from David Dominic Jr.'s photograph of Detroit rock legend Iggy Pop to Norval Morrisseau's dense acrylic painting "Punk Rockers Nancy and Andy" from 1989.
Jonathon Thunder's monumental 15-foot-wide painting "Basil's Dream" from 2024 exemplifies the exhibition's contemporary scope. The magenta-hued canvas depicts Thunderbird and Mishipeshu, powerful guardian spirits, playing pool while a DJ channels Digital Underground and spins records nearby. The work pays homage to Anishinaabe storyteller Basil Johnston, shown typing at the left of the billiards table. "[Thunder] put in one conversation the many influences that Native American artists have, not just from their own culture and background," De Quintal noted.
Kelly Church of the Matche-be-nash-she-wish Band of Pottawatomi, who served on the advisory group, helped identify artists often overlooked by mainstream institutions. "Most art exhibitions just take people that they know. Curators aren't likely to know many Native artists, because most are out there in the bigger world, doing something," she observed. The exhibition includes artists like single mothers who lack financial resources for mounting exhibitions but create museum-quality contemporary work.
The exhibition addresses serious contemporary issues through works like Horses Strickland's "Right to Consciousness" from 2024, a monumental canvas depicting Ojibwe people defending themselves from deadly assault. Strickland provides a direct message in the caption: "Do not let the lack of film and photographs take away from the fact that there was a genocide." Similarly, Ojibwe Two-Spirit designer Nonamey's "Dress for Nookomis" from 2023, painted blood red and outlined in black and white, serves as an emblem for the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives movement.
Functional objects receive equal treatment with fine art in the exhibition. Dennis Esquivel's stunning "Out of the Woodlands" from 2019, a cabinet of maple and cherry wood with Ottawa war clubs for legs, stands alongside Jillian Waterman's "In Case of Emergency Bury Me and Watch Me Grow" from 2024, an ensemble of vest, purse, and gas mask beaded with red, white, and yellow corn seeds. Exquisitely decorated canoes from the collection of Chippewa craftsman Ronald J. Paquin occupy central positions on pedestals.
The transformation reflects Detroit's ongoing revitalization efforts, which began in the early 2000s and accelerated after the city's 2013 bankruptcy. However, the museum acknowledges the complex history it must address, including informal but enforced segregation practices that discouraged Black Detroiters from participating in cultural spaces during the 20th century, and the fact that Detroit sits on unceded homelands of the Anishinaabe peoples, including the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi.
Patrick DesJarlait's 1946 watercolor "Maple Sugar Time" exemplifies the exhibition's success in creating unexpected connections. The painting's muscular characters harvesting and processing maple sap with mechanical grace recall Rivera's Detroit Industry Murals, creating a metaphorical thread connecting human labor, craft, and the strength required to thrive despite structural inequities. This visual dialogue between Indigenous and Mexican muralist traditions demonstrates the museum's ability to reveal previously hidden art historical relationships.
The museum's transformation occurs against the backdrop of ongoing labor discussions, as DIA workers await a union contract while calling for values of community, creativity, and dignity to be reflected not only in exhibitions but in workplace practices. This parallel struggle for recognition and fair treatment echoes the broader themes of inclusion and representation that define the museum's current direction.
Church expressed hope that the exhibition will inspire broader recognition of Indigenous artists and stories. "There's always more histories to tell," she said. "We have our First Nations brothers and sisters, up north too. We acknowledge them in the show with Edmonia [Lewis] and Norval [Morrisseau]. I hope that this is just a spark that sparks a lot of ideas in other people's minds." The DIA's achievement in making art history feel both unexpected and true to life positions it as a model for museums seeking to serve diverse communities while honoring complex cultural narratives.
