A Rare Gem in a City That Has Struggled

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/20/arts/design/detroit-institute-of-arts-what-to-see.html

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This article is part of our Fine Arts & Exhibits special section on how museums, galleries and auction houses are embracing new artists, new concepts and new traditions.

DETROIT — The Detroit Institute of Arts — now heralding its long relationship with Vincent van Gogh — is one of the finest museums in America and a sanctuary in a city that has gone through moments of glorious wealth — think Henry Ford — and decades of rough times.

The sprawling museum has a Diego Rivera masterpiece mural; lots of powerful African American art; a Rembrandt; a Michelangelo; a rare Pieter Bruegel; an expansive collection of African sculptures, textiles and masks; and one of the first and biggest American collections of the bold, strident German Expressionists that enraged Hitler.

The Diego Rivera mural is the jewel. “It’s our Sistine Chapel,” said Salvador Salort-Pons, the director and chief executive of the museum. “Everybody goes to the Sistine Chapel when they’re in Rome. When they’re in Detroit, they come to see our Diego Rivera.”

The museum has a huge collection of American art going back to colonial days, and lots of modern European paintings and sculptures. It has several Warhols, and works by some of the giants of Abstract Expressionism — de Kooning, Rothko, Frankenthaler and Motherwell. And it has mummies, ancient Chinese porcelain, centuries-old Greek statuary and shining body armor from Germany and Italy.

The institute was the first American museum to buy a van Gogh, and it is marking the 100th anniversary of that milestone. It narrowly avoided selling off some of its treasures when Detroit went into bankruptcy in 2013. But the city and the museum have recovered, and Mr. Salort-Pons said the museum’s finances have never been stronger.

Couples come to the museum for dates. On Saturdays, convoys of limousines pull up with brides and grooms to pose for wedding pictures against the museum’s delicately streaked marble walls and Beaux-Arts lanterns.

“I’ve been coming here since I was a kid,” said Laura Hureski, stretching out on a bench on the museum lawn in her flowing ivory mikado wedding gown one afternoon in August. “It’s so beautiful.”

Margaret and Mike Reese, retired high school teachers, were sipping Malbec under the skylight in the museum’s Kresge Court cafe with two other teachers. Their first date was in the museum. Ms. Reese often brought her students here. She finally became a member when she heard the van Gogh exhibition was coming. “I thought it might help me get tickets,” she said.

Carmen Cotrau, a recent Michigan arrival from Romania, popped out of the museum with several relatives, including one who manages a McDonald’s. “My skin is burning,” she said. “It was so wonderful.”