Current Exhibitions at the KIA

Every year, art teachers in the Kalamazoo County schools (private, public, and charter schools) submit a selection of works produced by their students, featured in an exhibition that is a delight to behold. In one of our most popular shows each year, the KIA's galleries are filled with the most creative, colorful, whimsical art by young artists from kindergarten through eighth grades.

Journey through Shaanxi Province, one of the cradles of Chinese civilization via folk paintings and artifacts of rural China that reveal a vital and charming national spirit. The 25 paintings and 14 artifacts in this exhibition reveal a humanity that aids us in understanding a people half a world away. Festivals, parades, the harvest, music, village traditions, farm animals, winter, kitchen work, and children are all celebrated in the paintings, while the artifacts show traditional Shaanxi customs and range from children's clothing and toys to New Year's prints and decorative household items. This exhibition was organized by ExhibitsUSA, a program of Mid-America Arts Alliance.

This exhibition of spectacular images in the KIA collection is assembled by guest curator Nancy Sojka, retired from the Detroit Institute of Arts as curator of prints and drawings. Included are groundbreaking, innovative works by Toulouse-Lautrec and Mary Cassatt; stunningly colorful prints by Howard Hodgkin and Richard Anuszkiewicz; and emotionally expressive images by Luis Jimenez and Vija Celmins.

My Hero presents a sprawling collection of 50-75 international artworks that explore iconic superhero imagery, along with reimagined interpretations of our classic heroes. The artists in the exhibition both pay homage to these universal idols, and also present critical questions about their popularity and God-like stature. Some artists in the exhibition also spin the fantasy further by imagining the hero as a child, as an aging being, and even as an animal. The variety of interpretations in My Hero is vast and challenging, dark and humorous, familiar yet new. The exhibition includes a wide array of media, including painting, illustration, photography, sculpture, mixed media and video.