By: Billy Craig for Advancing Macomb

The DIA… it’s so close and yet… when you step through its doors, the museum takes you to another world of color and expression filled with beauty and emotional power. It helps us understand why culture and art are important and compelling to each one of us as human beings. This place at Woodward and Kirby is a celebration of inspiration right here in our own backyard. It’s where you can feel what the artists felt and discover the same world you’ve always known through a different set of eyes.

The pureness of art is the heart and soul that civilization expresses through an endless array of artistic expressions. The ability to express what we feel through artistic endeavors separates us from all other living creatures in the world. It’s an outpouring of many different mediums….painting, drawing and sculpting with the artistic freedom to create in a way that reaches out and speaks to each of us individually. It’s the tears of happiness and the tears of joy, the moment of triumph and defeat, it covers every emotion. So many human events are captured by artistic interpretation.

“Imagine society without the civilizing influence of the arts and you’ll have to strip out what is most pleasurable in life – and much that is educationally vital”[i]

Art, it’s the original form of media that touches us with its antiquity of Greco-Roman and Ancient European or it’s modern sensibility and it pulls us in. There are so many different ways that art can let feelings be seen in our visual context through colors and different mediums. It’s the telling and documentation of stories for each of us to experience history or fiction. We see with our own eyes and bring it into our own thoughts and cry and laugh from the depth and thrill of our imagination. It’s where we’ve been, where we are, where we are going, and it captures us and holds us in an unforgettable time capsule. With great diversity, it’s African, Oceania, Indigenous Art, American Art, Asia and Islamic Art, European Art, African American Art, Performing Arts!

As an artist living here in Macomb County, I am inspired by life and express my inspiration through music.  Art influences our values, views, desires, fears, and worries. To know art is to know ourselves. Art slows time and allows us to capture moments from yesterday and throughout our history.

“I am an artist. Any artist knows that their creations, their pieces must express an array of human emotion and experience. From the juvenile and innocent to the erotic and the dangerous, and everything in between. Because Life is all of these things and more. It is the artist’s divine purpose to reflect what Experience has shown them and others. What truly sets us apart from each other is whether or not we truly know ourselves enough to reflect objectively; but, through our own unique voice.”[ii]

The DIA’s mission is to create opportunities for all visitors to find personal meaning. It’s literally right on our doorstep and it’s FREE for Macomb County residents.  For a sneak peak tour, check out Stan Simek’s blog.

Housed in the Beaux-Arts building which is referred to as the “temple of art” makes this quite a sight to see. The DIA is 658,000 square feet that includes more than 100 galleries, 1,150-seat auditorium, a 380-seat lecture/recital hall, an art reference library, state of the art conservation services laboratory.

Museum hours are 9a–4p Tuesdays–Thursdays, 9a–10p Fridays, and 10a–5p Saturdays and Sundays. For membership information, call 313-833-7971

[i] Sir Peter Bazalgette,  Chair of Arts Council England

[ii] Solange Nicole (artist)