Appreciate the art in your backyard: the Detroit Institute of Arts

Home Culture Appreciate the art in your backyard: the Detroit Institute of Arts

When you consider the great art museums and galleries of the world, you may think of the Louvre in Paris, the British Museum in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, or possibly the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C.

I’m willing to guess that you don’t think about the art museum only 100 miles east of Hillsdale, which houses van Gogh’s “Portrait of Postman Roulin,” Rodin’s statue of “the Thinker,” and Picasso’s “Fruit, Carafe, and Glass” ― The Detroit Institute of Arts.

If I were to pose the same question to my high school self, I probably would have left out the DIA as well. Growing up in a suburb north of Detroit, I largely took the DIA for granted. Frankly, I knew little about fine art at all.
I had my first experience at the DIA during my senior year of high school when my Spanish class visited the museum to survey its Mexican and Spanish art. I knew almost nothing about that either, so I had no expectations when my class arrived at the museum.

We passed quickly through a display of African statues, and headed to Rivera Court ― which, unbeknownst to me at the time, is perhaps the best example of Mexican art in the United States.

A spacious room, Rivera Court houses 27 frescos painted by Diego Rivera, with the large frescos on the north and south walls of the court serving as focal points. Once open to the sky, the room is now covered by a glass ceiling, allowing for superlative lighting during the middle of the day. With frescos on all four sides of the room, the experience is totally immersive, drawing you into the congruous but distinct frescos.

Rivera’s work is expansive, yet every inch is detailed and imbued with meaning and motifs. Because the project was so great, the frescos, which were meant to celebrate Detroit’s industrial might, wouldn’t have been completed if not for a very large donation from Henry Ford’s son, Edsel.

Since the money to complete the project was coming from the Ford family, Rivera had to depict the Ford River Rouge Plant, the setting of his piece, in a good light. In many ways, Rivera complied with these instructions. He even depicted Henry Ford as a teacher leading a class on engineering.

As the DIA expert explained to my class, however, the frescos are much more than a simple celebration of the industry at Ford’s River Rouge Plant. Rivera was a Marxist, and he wove themes of worker oppression throughout his work.

His Marxist overtones are arguably most apparent in one of the panels on the west wall, which features a pair of work gloves with red stars printed on them. Though seen as an overt nod to communism by many after its 1933 unveiling, this image is still not as obvious as Rivera’s depiction of Lenin in a project Rivera began for the Rockefeller Center’s Great Hall in New York City. Rivera was never allowed to finish the mural and the Rockefellers had all of his previous work on the mural destroyed.

Many protesters in Detroit to have Rivera’s frescos in the DIA destroyed as well. The Detroit News called the frescos “vulgar” and “un-american.”

Thankfully, the DIA did not allow the frescos to be destroyed.

As I became more and more aware of Rivera’s communist motifs throughout the frescos, my experiences of the pieces was enhanced. Rivera didn’t waste a single panel; each one is packed with symbolism. My favorite piece of symbolism is a steam turbine on the west wall that Rivera shaped into the likeness of an ear. Scholars believe that Rivera did this to show the extreme lengths to which factory management went to spy on workers.

I’ve been to the MET in New York City and the Louvre in Paris. I’ve seen the Mona Lisa. It’s small, and because of the crowd surrounding it, I didn’t get a great look. I’ve now visited Rivera Court twice. On the second visit, the room was virtually empty, giving me all the time I could want to take in the expansive and immersive piece of art.
So next time you’re in Detroit, consider checking out the DIA. Walk into Rivera Court and engage all of the facets of liberal arts Hillsdale has given you.

Rivera will be ready.

Evan Carter is a sophomore from Southfield, Michigan. He is majoring in politics and minoring in journalism through the Dow Journalism program. He is the web editor for the Collegian.