Kalamazoo Institute of Arts
Encyclopedia
The Kalamazoo Institute of Arts (KIA) is a non-profit visual arts museum and school in downtown Kalamazoo
, Michigan
, United States
. Admission to most exhibitions and programs is free.
The KIA's current facility opened in September 1961. Designed by the Chicago, Illinois, firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill
, the 45000 square feet (4,180.6 m²) structure is based on the Mies van der Rohe International Style
of architecture. It offers studio classrooms, a library, auditorium, exhibit areas, a sculpture garden and office space.
In 1997, the KIA began a $14.5-million expansion and renovation. The project increased the size of the KIA to 72000 square feet (6,689 m²), and added a two-story lobby gallery, auditorium, classrooms and galleries, gallery shop, library and an interactive gallery for kids.
Dale Chihuly
's "Red, Orange and French Yellow", a colorful chandelier of 400 pieces of glass, became a permanent fixture in the lobby foyer. The renovated facility, with its 10 galleries and 11000 square feet (1,021.9 m²) of exhibition space, opened in September 1998.
The museum also mounts ticketed exhibitions; the most successful have drawn tens of thousands of visitors.
The KIA offers lectures and educational events, outreach programs and a fine arts research library.
The museum's permanent collection consists of more than 3,600 original works. Its primary emphasis is on 20th-century American art, with works by such artists as Ansel Adams
, Mary Cassatt
, Alexander Calder
, Chuck Close
, Helen Frankenthaler
, Edward Hopper
, Luis Jimenez
, Käthe Kollwitz
, Tim Lowly
, Ed Paschke
, Norman Rockwell
, Cindy Sherman
, Lorna Simpson
, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Andy Warhol
, James Abbott McNeill Whistler and Andrew Wyeth
. The collection also includes a number of 18th- and 19th-century American works, 20th-century European works, as well as African, Chinese, Japanese and Pre-Columbian and Oceanic works.
The school has offered visual arts instruction to the community since 1931. Its goal is to nurture artistic creativity in the residents of West Michigan by providing affordable classes and workshops for people of all ages and skill levels in a range of media, including painting and drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography, jewelry-making, weaving and fiber arts. Faculty members are practicing artists and educators. The school was renamed in 2006 to honor Kalamazoo artist and former school director Kirk Newman.
The KIA Art Fair began in 1952 as the Clothesline Art Show, an opportunity for local and regional artists to sell their works. Held the first Saturday of June in nearby Bronson Park, the KIA Art Fair is now the second oldest continuously running art fair in the United States. Each year, thousands of visitors join 200 artists in Bronson Park to view and purchase paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, jewelry, ceramics, fiber ware, sculpture and more.
Kalamazoo, Michigan
The area on which the modern city stands was once home to Native Americans of the Hopewell culture, who migrated into the area sometime before the first millennium. Evidence of their early residency remains in the form of a small mound in downtown's Bronson Park. The Hopewell civilization began to...
, Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Admission to most exhibitions and programs is free.
History
In 1924, members of the Kalamazoo Chapter of the American Federation of the Arts established the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts "to further the development of interest and education in and of regard and appreciation for the various arts."Skidmore, Owings and Merrill
Skidmore, Owings and Merrill LLP is an American architectural and engineering firm that was formed in Chicago in 1936 by Louis Skidmore and Nathaniel Owings; in 1939 they were joined by John O. Merrill. They opened their first branch in New York City, New York in 1937. SOM is one of the largest...
, the 45000 square feet (4,180.6 m²) structure is based on the Mies van der Rohe International Style
International style (architecture)
The International style is a major architectural style that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s, the formative decades of Modern architecture. The term originated from the name of a book by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, The International Style...
of architecture. It offers studio classrooms, a library, auditorium, exhibit areas, a sculpture garden and office space.
In 1997, the KIA began a $14.5-million expansion and renovation. The project increased the size of the KIA to 72000 square feet (6,689 m²), and added a two-story lobby gallery, auditorium, classrooms and galleries, gallery shop, library and an interactive gallery for kids.
Dale Chihuly
Dale Chihuly
Dale Chihuly is an American glass sculptor and entrepreneur.-Biography:Chihuly graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in Tacoma, Washington. He enrolled at the College of the Puget Sound in 1959...
's "Red, Orange and French Yellow", a colorful chandelier of 400 pieces of glass, became a permanent fixture in the lobby foyer. The renovated facility, with its 10 galleries and 11000 square feet (1,021.9 m²) of exhibition space, opened in September 1998.
Exhibitions
The KIA hosts 10 to 15 temporary exhibitions each year. These include recurring shows such as the West Michigan Area Show, High School Area Show, and Young Artists of Kalamazoo County. Others are built around works lent from museums, galleries, corporations or private collections.The museum also mounts ticketed exhibitions; the most successful have drawn tens of thousands of visitors.
- In 2004, 47,000 visitors came to see "Millet To Matisse: Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century French Painting", an exhibition of Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings from Kelvingrove Art Gallery and MuseumKelvingrove Art Gallery and MuseumThe Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum is a museum and art gallery in Glasgow, Scotland. The building houses one of Europe's great civic art collections...
in Glasgow. - In 2005, nearly 60,000 people came from all 50 states and 17 countries to see "Chihuly in Kalamazoo", an exhibition of works by glass artist Dale ChihulyDale ChihulyDale Chihuly is an American glass sculptor and entrepreneur.-Biography:Chihuly graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in Tacoma, Washington. He enrolled at the College of the Puget Sound in 1959...
. - In 2007, the KIA hosted "Lorna SimpsonLorna SimpsonLorna Simpson is an African American artist and photographer who made her name in the 1980s and 1990s with artworks such as Guarded Conditions and Square Deal. Her work often portrays black women combined with text to express contemporary society's relationship with race, ethnicity and sex...
", an exhibition of the work of this contemporary artist that had stopped at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los AngelesMuseum of Contemporary Art, Los AngelesThe Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles is a contemporary art museum with three locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near Walt Disney Concert Hall...
and the Whitney Museum of American ArtWhitney Museum of American ArtThe Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
(New York). - In 2008, the KIA curated an exhibition celebrating the resurgence of American figurative painting: "The Figure Revealed".
- In 2008-09, the KIA is hosting two large-scale, ticketed exhibitions in 2008-09: "Spared from the Storm: Masterworks from the New Orleans Museum of ArtNew Orleans Museum of ArtThe New Orleans Museum of Art is the oldest fine arts museum in the city of New Orleans. It is situated within City Park, a short distance from the intersection of Carrollton Avenue and Esplanade Avenue, and near the terminus of the "Canal Street - City Park" streetcar line...
" (November-February) and "Georgia O’Keeffe and Her Times: American Modernism" from the Lane Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, BostonMuseum of Fine Arts, BostonThe Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, is one of the largest museums in the United States, attracting over one million visitors a year. It contains over 450,000 works of art, making it one of the most comprehensive collections in the Americas...
(May-September).
The KIA offers lectures and educational events, outreach programs and a fine arts research library.
Permanent collection
Ansel Adams
Ansel Easton Adams was an American photographer and environmentalist, best known for his black-and-white photographs of the American West, especially in Yosemite National Park....
, Mary Cassatt
Mary Cassatt
Mary Stevenson Cassatt was an American painter and printmaker. She lived much of her adult life in France, where she first befriended Edgar Degas and later exhibited among the Impressionists...
, Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder was an American sculptor and artist most famous for inventing mobile sculptures. In addition to mobile and stable sculpture, Alexander Calder also created paintings, lithographs, toys, tapestry, jewelry and household objects.-Childhood:Alexander "Sandy" Calder was born in Lawnton,...
, Chuck Close
Chuck Close
Charles Thomas "Chuck" Close is an American painter and photographer who achieved fame as a photorealist, through his massive-scale portraits...
, Helen Frankenthaler
Helen Frankenthaler
Helen Frankenthaler is an American abstract expressionist painter. She is a major contributor to the history of postwar American painting. Having exhibited her work in six decades she has spanned several generations of abstract painters while continuing to produce vital and ever-changing new work...
, Edward Hopper
Edward Hopper
Edward Hopper was a prominent American realist painter and printmaker. While most popularly known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching...
, Luis Jimenez
Luis Jiménez
Luis Jiménez may refer to:*Luis Antonio Jiménez, Chilean football player*Luis Jiménez , Venezuelan baseball player*Luis Jiménez , Dominican Republic baseball player*Luis Jiménez , Mexican Olympic fencer...
, Käthe Kollwitz
Käthe Kollwitz
Käthe Kollwitz was a German painter, printmaker, and sculptor whose work offered an eloquent and often searing account of the human condition in the first half of the 20th century...
, Tim Lowly
Tim Lowly
Tim Lowly is a Chicago artist, musician, and teacher. He is known for compassionate egg tempera pictures of children in mysterious circumstances.-Biography:...
, Ed Paschke
Ed Paschke
Edward Francis Paschke was a Polish American painter. His childhood interest in animation and cartoons, as well as his father's creativity in wood carving and construction, led him toward a career in art...
, Norman Rockwell
Norman Rockwell
Norman Percevel Rockwell was a 20th-century American painter and illustrator. His works enjoy a broad popular appeal in the United States for their reflection of American culture. Rockwell is most famous for the cover illustrations of everyday life scenarios he created for The Saturday Evening...
, Cindy Sherman
Cindy Sherman
Cindy Sherman is an American photographer and film director, best known for her conceptual portraits. Sherman currently lives and works in New York City. In 1995, she was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. She is represented by Sprüth Magers Berlin London in and Metro Pictures gallery in...
, Lorna Simpson
Lorna Simpson
Lorna Simpson is an African American artist and photographer who made her name in the 1980s and 1990s with artworks such as Guarded Conditions and Square Deal. Her work often portrays black women combined with text to express contemporary society's relationship with race, ethnicity and sex...
, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
, James Abbott McNeill Whistler and Andrew Wyeth
Andrew Wyeth
Andrew Newell Wyeth was a visual artist, primarily a realist painter, working predominantly in a regionalist style. He was one of the best-known U.S. artists of the middle 20th century....
. The collection also includes a number of 18th- and 19th-century American works, 20th-century European works, as well as African, Chinese, Japanese and Pre-Columbian and Oceanic works.
Kirk Newman Art School
KIA Art Fair