New Acquisitions at the DIA
Press release (18 December 2017) from the DIA:
Out of the Crate: New Gifts and Purchases
Detroit Institute of Arts, opened January 12
Attributed to Juan Pascual de Mena, Saint Benedict of Palermo, 1770–80, coniferous wood, pigment, gold (Detroit Institute of Art).
The Detroit Institute of Arts opened a gallery dedicated to some of the museum’s newest acquisitions while also providing the public with a look at the art acquisition process. The gallery, called Out of the Crate: New Gifts & Purchases, opened January 12.
A selection of recent purchases and gifts chosen by DIA Director Salvador Salort-Pons are on view for approximately six months, after which they will be replaced with newer acquisitions. “The DIA has one of the most significant art collections in the United States, and one way we maintain this quality is by acquiring new artworks every year,” said Salort-Pons. “Thanks to generous donors, the DIA has been able to establish funds designated for art acquisitions only, with which we are able to strengthen our collection. This gallery offers a transparent look at the DIA’s collecting process and policies while giving visitors a first look at both recent purchases and gifts.”
Before the DIA acquires a work of art, it goes through a rigorous assessment to ensure its quality and authenticity. Informational materials will provide an overview of the entire process, from initial research to approval by the board of directors, and the roles various experts play along the way.
Seven artworks are featured in the first installation:
• Attributed to Juan Pascual de Mena, Saint Benedict of Palermo, 1770–80, coniferous wood, pigment, gold. Museum purchase.
• Unknown artist, Maternity Figure (Obaahemaa), 19th century, Akan (Asante), African, wood with pigment. Museum purchase.
• James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Salute Dawn, 1879, etching with drypoint. Museum purchase.
• Lajos Mack, Vase, ca. 1900, slip-cast ceramic with eosin glazes. Gift of Dr. Theodore and Diana Golden.
• Hiroshi Sugimoto, Fox, Michigan, 1980, gelatin silver print. Museum purchase.
• Cristina Iglesias, Untitled (Room 11 [-1999], edition 1/15, 1999, ink on copper plate. Gift of Janis and William M. Wetsman.
• Cornelia Parker, There must be some kind of way outta here, 2016, mixed media. Museum purchase.
Lecture | Anne Lafont on Portraits of African Women
Next week at the Warburg Institute:
Anne Lafont | Portrait of the African Woman from Atlantic to Mississippi:
A New Topography of the Art of Enlightenment
The Warburg Institute, London, 24 January 2018
Marie-Guillemine Benoist, Portrait d’une femme noire, shown at the Salon of 1800 under the title Portrait d’une négresse (Paris: Musée du Louvre, 2508, acquired in 1818).
The figures of Africans in the early modern arts trouble the traditional chronology and geography of art history and sometimes disturb the hierarchical circulation of commodities between European metropolises and colonial territories. One cannot study art of colonial times and places with the exact same categories used to define the Italian Renaissance, the British Landscape and even the mobile case of El Greco. Authorship, centre versus periphery, the picture, the unicum… all these units need to be renegotiated in the imperial context. This lecture will focus on these issues through case studies based on the painting of female black figures in France and the French Americas at the end of the eighteenth century and in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Wednesday, 24 January 2018, 17:30.
Anne Lafont, Directrice d’études, EHESS, l’Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris.
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