The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) has reinstalled its African American galleries, moving them from the back of the museum to a prominent location beside Diego Rivera's iconic "Detroit Industry Murals" (1932–33). The reinstallation is framed by a quote from Alain Locke's 1925 essay "The Legacy of the Ancestral Arts," envisioning the museum as an instrument of cultural education and repair. Complementing this is "Contemporary Anishinaabe Art: A Continuation" (through April 5), the first comprehensive survey of art from the Indigenous inhabitants of the Great Lakes region. The DIA began collecting African American art in 1943 and in 2001 became the first US museum to name a curator devoted to that field, Valerie J. Mercer, who still serves as curator and head of African American art.
This reinstallation matters because it represents the DIA's effort to confront its own history and the broader legacy of exclusion in museums, particularly in a city like Detroit that has experienced segregation, economic decline, and a polarizing revitalization. By placing African American art alongside Rivera's murals and highlighting Indigenous art, the DIA aims to draw in a diverse local audience and address historical injustices, including the fact that the museum sits on unceded Anishinaabe homelands. The move reflects a growing institutional commitment to rethinking how art history is presented and whose stories are told, though the museum still faces the challenge of getting Detroiters through the door.