“Contemporary Anishinaabe Art: A Continuation” installation view at Detroit Institute of Arts.
Detroit Institute of Arts.
The Detroit Institute of Arts possesses roughly 65,000 artworks. One of them, a black ash top hat referencing Anishinaabe treaties created by Kelly Church and donated by a collector to the DIA in 2020 set in motion the museum’s latest exhibition: “Contemporary Anishinaabe Art: A Continuation.”
Featuring more than 60 Anishinaabe artists from Michigan and across the Great Lakes region of the United States and Canada, the show is one of the largest presentations of contemporary Native American art ever in the Midwest, and the first major Native American art exhibition at the DIA in over 30 years. Nearly 100 contemporary artworks on view September 28, 2025, through April 8, 2026, highlight and explore the history, perspectives, and continuing story of the Anishinaabe people.
Kelly Church asked; the museum listened.
“I was at another show with Jason Quigno (b. 1975; Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe), the sculptor here, and he said to me, ‘Hey, Kelly, why don’t you ask the DIA if we can have Anishinaabe exhibition? We’ve never had one there.’ He knew I just had a piece donated and had met (DIA Assistant Curator for Native American Art) Denene De Quintal,” Church (b. 1967; Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Band of Pottawatomi; Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians descent) told Forbes.com. “I emailed her and asked her what (Quigno) asked, and she said she had already been thinking about doing a show about Anishinaabe art, so let’s talk.”
Talk they did.
Not only Church and De Quintal, the future exhibition’s curator, but also what became an advisory board consisting of Ojibwe (Chippewa), Ottawa (Odawa), and Potawatomi (Pottawatomi) artists–the “Council of the Three Fires” confederacy constituting the broader Anishinaabe people and culture.
“When we did speak, I asked (De Quintal) can we have a Native advisory board help pick out art for the show because we know the artists in our communities; she was in full agreeance. She knows that we knew people that she would never know because curators don’t get into the communities like that,” Church explained. “This show is bringing those beautiful artists out of places where they haven’t been seen before, and bringing them together with people who have been seen.”
Exhibition artists are a mix of celebrated stalwarts from major museum collections like Church, who comes from an unbroken line of black ash basket makers predating the United States, Frank Big Bear (b. 1953; Ojibwe), George Morrison (1919-2000; Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa), Jim Denomie (1955-2022, Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa), and Mary Edmonia Lewis (1844-1907, Mississauga Ojibwe), along with those receiving their first significant institutional attention.
“(The advisory board) gave (De Quintal) names from everywhere, people that we knew did incredible contemporary art that would be museum quality. There were over 100 names when this started,” Church said. “Everyone in the show deserves the space that they’re going to be having; they’re unseen because they might be mothers that don’t get to come to the art markets, or they might have a day job and they can’t get to the art markets, or they might not be able to afford it. It’s factors like this that are keeping them from not being seen in the way that they should.”
Church references the Native American art markets held across the country that remain a critical support system for Indigenous artists and showcase for recognition by the wider art world. At Santa Fe Indian Market in 2019–the largest, oldest and most prestigious of the markets–Church had one of her black ash baskets, Sustaining Traditions—Digital Teachings (2018), acquired by a curator from the Art Institute of Chicago. It has since been installed in a gallery with Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks (1942), arguably the most famous image in American art history.
Like the Art Institute of Chicago, the Detroit Institute of Arts stands as one of the most prestigious art museums in the world. It was the first American museum to acquire a painting by Van Gogh. It houses Diego Rivera’s monumentally brilliant Detroit Industry Murals (1932-1933). Anishinaabe artwork–artwork from the people indigenous to Detroit and Michigan and the Midwest–belongs there. Contemporary artwork; not just the historic stuff that has customarily been more palatable for display by Anglo-led settler colonial museums, restricting Native people to their past.
Contemporary Anishinaabe Art
Norval Morrisseau, ‘Punk Rockers.’
Estate of Norval Morrisseau
“Contemporary Anishinaabe Art: A Continuation” includes beadwork, birchbark artistry, clothing, film, photography, graphic design, jewelry, painting, pottery, sculpture, and woodwork. Wall text for each piece will be written in English as well as the artist’s native language. DIA recruited an Anishnaabemowin translator–the Native American language of the Great Lakes region–for the project.
“All of our languages are understood by each other, but the Potawatomi were moved out west, and they have a little bit more of a Western dialect,” Church explained. “Our mother language is the Ojibwe language, and Ottawa is–I always joke–it’s kind of a slang of the Ojibwe language. We leave some syllables off to get our point across.”
Anishinaabe languages survive. Anishinaabe art and culture survives. Anishinaabe people and nations survive.
“We’re still here,” Church said, reinforcing one of the exhibition’s crucial messages. “We’re diverse, here in Michigan especially; we have 12 federally recognized tribes, four state recognized tribes, and we’re all Anishinaabe in this state. Whatever Native influence you see is based on the Anishinaabe language and culture. We’re part of the bigger fabric of society, too. The Anishinaabe people were rich with their herbal medicines, and we use those properties in our own medicines today. We’re not just on our reservations. We are everywhere. We’re doctors, we’re pharmacists, we’re artists, we’re teachers, we’re lawyers.”
A special presentation in accordance with the exhibition at the museum will be a screening of Star Wars in Ojibwe with English subtitles on October 4, 2025. Tickets required. More information.
In honor of Indigenous Peoples’ Day, the DIA will be open on Monday, October 13, 2025, (10 am–4 pm) with free admission to “Contemporary Anishinaabe Art: A Continuation” and the Native American galleries.
New African American Art Galleries At Detroit Institute of Arts
“Contemporary Anishinaabe Art” isn’t the only reason to be excited about the Detroit Institute of Arts this fall. Newly reimagined African American art galleries will formally open to the public on October 18. This transformational reinstallation moves the presentation of select works from the DIA’s renowned African American art collection to the center of the institution—adjacent the iconic Diego Rivera murals—making the artworks more visible and accessible to all visitors.
The galleries will showcase 50 works—including paintings, sculpture, prints, photography and furniture—illuminating a wide range of artists and genres, from 1840-1986, becoming one of the first museums in the world to build and show its extraordinary collection of African American art in dedicated galleries. The DIA’s collection of African American art includes approximately 700 works by noted artists Robert Seldon Duncanson, Richmond Barthé, Elizabeth Catlett, Edward Clark, Mavis Pusey, and more.
The reinstallation is organized by the DIA’s acclaimed Center for African American Art which was established in 2000 as the first curatorial department exclusively devoted to the genre at a major fine arts or encyclopedic museum.
The redesigned African American galleries represents the first phase in a larger, planned transformation of the museum’s second floor North Wing, which also includes redesigns of the Modern and Contemporary sections.
