Upcoming Exhibitions at the KIA

Showcasing works in a touring exhibition that reflects the breadth of The Studio Museum's significant permanent collection. Rather than aiming to construct a single history of "black art," the exhibition emphasizes plurality, including multiple approaches to and reflections on art created by artists of African descent. With works in all media from the 1930s to the present, the collection includes a wide range of well-known artists including Romare Bearden, Chakaia Booker, Elizabeth Catlett, Thornton Dial, David Hammons, Titus Kaphar, Jacob Lawrence, Norman Lewis, Kerry James Marshall, Wangechi Mutu, Lorna Simpson, Kehinde Wiley, and Fred Wilson. The KIA is the only Midwest venue for this exhibition, on tour while the Studio Museum raises its new building.

Supporting artists is part of the KIA mission, as evidenced by our annual juried exhibitions and art school's post-baccalaureate residency program. This exhibition seeks to highlight the diversity of creativity and forms that Black artists are working and experimenting with right here in Michigan, and to offer our audiences an understanding of the breadth and depth of their talent and contribution to the cultural richness of our region. Where We Stand features nine Michigan artists working in sculpture, photography, painting, ceramics, and printmaking--emerging artists and veterans in their field who address issues as diverse as the environment, mass incarceration, the criminal justice system, and concepts of beauty.

Resilience is an important exhibition that offers a fresh perspective on our growing collection of more than 100 masterly works by Black artists. This exhibition demonstrates to our community the KIA's 95-year long history and commitment of collecting influential and diverse art. Centered around social justice, Resilience highlights the common threads that connect us all as human beings, in an effort to open the door to change. Visitors will see work by Romare Bearden, Dawoud Bey, Frank Bowling, Grafton Tyler Brown, Robert Duncanson, Samuel Levi Jones, Jacob Larwrence, Edmonia Lewis, Whitfield Lovell, Richard Mayhew, Lorna Simpson, Merton Simpson, Hughie Lee-Smith (shown), Henry Tanner, and Philemona Williamson.

One of the artists who made San Francisco famous for a figurative style of painting known as the Bay Area School, David Park (1911-1960) has been called one of the most art-historically underrated artists of the mid-20th century. More than 100 works comprise the first Park exhibition in a major museum in over 30 years, organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition will span the range of the artist's career, from social realist and cubist inspired works of the 1930s and early 1940s; abstract expressionist works of the late 19402, to figurative canvases of the 1950s. Park's only art training was one year at California's Otis Art Institute, though he began teaching art at the age of 26 - at a girls' school in Massachusetts, at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute) and the University of California at Berkeley. He died at 49 of lung cancer, in Berkeley. The Park painting owned by the KIA, Woman with Coffee Pot, is featured in the exhibition.