|
 Detroit Institute of Arts - Detroit, MI
N 42° 21.551 W 083° 03.906
17T E 329935 N 4691722
The Detroit Institute of Arts is a NRHP property established in 1885 in Detroit, Michigan.
Waymark Code: WM185TT
Location: Michigan, United States
Date Posted: 06/04/2023
Views: 1
40. The DETROIT INSTITUTE OF ARTS (open 1-5, 7-10 Tues., Thurs., and Fri.; 1-5 Wed.; 9-5 Sat.; 2-6 Sun. and holidays; catalog of building, $1; permanent collections guide, 254), 5200 Woodward Ave., was designed by the Philadelphia architect, Paul P. Cret, with the assistance of Zantzinger, Borie, and Medary. Cret chose Vermont marble as the structural material most suited to the edifice's style, a modified form of Italian Renaissance. Its cost of $4,000,000 was defrayed by general taxation. The structure's greatest beauty lies in the excellence of the treatment of mass and proportion. Terraced steps rise in easy flights to the level of the main floor and give access to the building through an entrance of three arches springing from Ionic columns. Bronze reproductions of Italian sculpture occupy niches in the end bays-St. George by Donatello (R) and The Slave by Michelangelo (L). At the sides of the broad steps are bronze casts of French Renaissance figures-the heroic River God by Coysevox and Nymph by Philippe Magnier; these, with the gardens and lawns, form integral parts of the general composition.
The institute is an outgrowth of the Museum of Art Corporation organized in 1885 (see Artists and Craftsmen). Participants in that body are now members of the Detroit Museum of Art Founders Society, a group that immeasurably strengthened the cultural life of Detroit, by gifts of art works and donations of funds, during the years when the city was forced to curtail the institute's income.
The Institute of Arts is notable both for the arrangement of its galleries, which follow the development of civilization in historical sequence, and for the grouping in comprehensive exhibits of the various forms of art painting, sculpture, and decorative arts as the collective expression of a culture. The collections are notable for the completeness with which they represent the history of art. The institute has specialized in Italian Gothic sculpture and the northern European painters. Also it is making very definite contributions to art developments in the quality of the loan exhibits that are periodically shown. Among these was the Rembrandt Exhibit, one of the most comprehensive collections ever gathered.
The layout of galleries attests the technical ability of the architects in planning from the inside out, but a good measure of credit must go to Dr. W. R. Valentiner, art director of the institute, for the functional projection of the architects' design. The collections are arranged on one main floor in a series of period rooms, planned, furnished, and lighted to create appropriate backgrounds, avoid monotony, and spare the visitor the effects of 'museum fatigue.' According to Richard F. Bach of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 'This building and its collections have made a distinct contribution to museum theory and practice in the United States; have in truth made fact out of much that could hitherto be classed only as experiment.'
The concourse or great hall is directly ahead from the foyer, and beyond that is the garden court. To the right of the foyer is the European section, with 17 rooms arranged around an open courtyard. Beginning with the first gallery, the rooms in this block of building are arranged to offer a retrospect of western civilization, beginning with the present century and going back to the days of the early Christians The detail of the early-Christian room is representative of the careful treatment of backgrounds: stone-vaulted roof, rough-plaster walls studded with sculptured ornaments, and an early Romanesque altarpiece, which forms the focus of the room, provide an appropriate setting for the exhibits of this period.
Left of the foyer is the American section. Beginning with contemporary painting, sculpture, and handicraft, it retraces the years to a display of the arts and crafts of Colonial days. A corner gallery housing contemporary art was decorated in 1936 with a fine series of ceiling frescoes by John Carroll (see Artists and Craftsmen). In the Colonial section is part of an eighteenth-century Pennsylvania county house, Whitby Hall, with original paneling, moldings, and fireplaces.
Left from the concourse, where sculptured pieces of heroic proportions are often on display, are three galleries for temporary exhibits arranged so as not to interfere with permanent displays on other parts of the main floor.
The entrance to the garden court, at the far end of the concourse, enhanced by a hand-wrought iron gate by Caldwell. Right from this court are rooms containing Greek and Roman antiquities and Egyptian, Persian, and East Indian arts. The galleries of the Far East are to the left. The garden court itself has become widely known for the much-discussed murals that Diego Rivera completed in 1933 (see Artists and Craftsmen)Originally a Baroque interior garden, with a fountain, many plants, and a colored canvas hung in the high roof to soften the light, the court has become an exhibition room for Rivera's fresco-murals, and the Baroque architectural details have been somewhat simplified to furnish a more appropriate setting for the 27 panels, entitled Detroit Industry.
One of the most distinctive features of these murals is the portrayal upon a few square feet of wall-space of multifarious factory activities that appear to extend for thousands of feet. The murals can be studied to best advantage from the stairway that rises from the loggia at the rear of the court. The stairway leads to the theater, entered from the halfway landing, and also to five small galleries, the only ones above the main floor. These galleries contain examples of modern art. By this arrangement the most difficult problem of museums is solved, for here 'the new and outré may have its seasoning,' before it earns a place in the galleries below.
On the ground level are galleries of prints, drawings, textiles, Romanesque art, and American and European prehistoric art. On this floor, also, are a reference library, a small lecture hall (seating about 400) equipped for use by the educational staff or visiting lecturers, and, at the rear, a large auditorium with a stage and pipe organ,for musicales, lectures, dramatic performances, and kindred purposes.
In the EGYPTIAN SECTION, the stone Portrait Head, of the XII Dynasty, and a small Seated Scribe, of the XVIII Dynasty, are of exceptional quality. In the same gallery is the Dragon of Bel-Marduk, a glazed tile relief from the Ishter Gate of Babylon, built by Nebuchadnezzar in the seventh century B.C. In the ROMAN ROOM is a series of portrait heads of emperors. In the GREEK ROOM is the Head of a Bearded Man, an Athenian work of the first half of the fifth century B.C. In the CHINESE GALLERIES are Early Autumn by Ch'ien Hsuan, a masterpiece of Chinese painting; the gilt Maitreya, Buddha of the Future, of the Northern Wei Dynasty, and a Colossal Head of a Lion, Tang Dynasty. The outstanding piece in the JAPANESE SECTION is a screen, Pipe Tree and Waterfall, by Korin. In the PERSIAN GALLERIES, the most important pieces are the Silk Animal Carpet, seventeenth century, and the Combat of Ardashir and Adruwan, a scene from a fourteenth-century miniature.
In the ITALIAN SECTION, a group of Italian Gothic sculptures is outstanding in this country; the Madonna and Child by Nino Pisano is the most notable piece. The Florentine school is well represented. Among the rarer items are Saint John by Andrea del Castagno, Judith by Antonio Pollaiuolo, Head of Christ by Botticelli, and Portrait of a Lady by Verrocchio or Leonardo da Vinci. The most important of the Sienese school is the Procession to Calvary by Sassetta, one of the best known of his works. The Umbrian school is exemplified by two small pictures of Signorelli and a Portrait of a Donor by Raphael, an unusual and extremely interesting fragment of a lost altarpiece. Three early pictures of Correggio are among the representations of the North Italian school. The crown of the Italian group is its great collection of paintings by the Venetian masters, Tiepolo, Tintoretto, Giovanni Bel lini, and Titian (the institute has one of the noted groups of Titian's paintings in this country). The Baroque collection includes The Fruit Vendor by Caravaggio, Portrait of a Man by Velasquez, Selene and Endymion by Poussin, Girl with a Candle by Georges de la Tour, and Village Piper by Antoine LeNain.
The DUTCH AND FLEMISH ROOMS, housing a collection that ranks with the best in the United States, contain the work of such painters as Jan van Eyck, Pieter Breughel, and his contemporaries who figure seldom in American collections. Other valuable paintings in these rooms Rubens David and Abigail and Portrait of His Brother, Philippe Rubens, Rembrandt's The Visitation, Solomon Ruysdael's Canal Scene, Jacob van Ruysdael's The Cemetery, and Hercules Saghers' Landscape. Here, too, is a unique group by the architectural painters, especially three paintings by Emanuel de Witte; and still life painters including Jan Breughel and Kalf.
The strength of the AMERICAN SECTION is its comprehensiveness, covering as it does the development of American painting from the eighteenth-century portrait painters to the present day. This section includes Badger's John Adams, Trumbull's John Trumbull the Poet, and works by Stuart and by Copley; in a group of landscapists and portraitists of the early nineteenth century is Bennett's View of Detroit in 1836. American impressionism is represented by the work of W. M. Chase and Gari Melchers; the twentieth century by Sloan's McSorley's Bar and John Carroll's Frescoes of Morning, Noon, and Evening.
The collections of twentieth-century art are notable for the Rivera frescoes, already mentioned, and for the important group of modern French, German, and Italian painters and sculptors. On the ground floor is a PERMANENT EXHIBIT OF DRAWINGS, ranging from medieval illustrations to modern works. Notable pieces are a letter S with a miniature of the Pentecost by Lorenzo Monaco, Florentine, fifteenth century; Study of the Sistine Ceiling by Michelangelo; Caricature by Leonardo da Vinci; Peasants in a Tavern by Brower; Man Seated by Pieter de Hooch (his only known drawing); Park Scene by Fragonard; Bather by Degas; and Portrait of E. Forert by Picasso. -Michigan: A Guide to the Wolverine State 1941
A commercial from 1976 for the Detroit Institute of Arts
Book: Michigan
Page Number(s) of Excerpt: 253 - 256
Year Originally Published: 1941
|
Visit Instructions:
To log a Visit, please supply an original image of the Waymark.
Recent Visits/Logs:
| There are no logs for this waymark yet. |
|
|
|
|