DETROIT, MICH.- The Detroit Institute of Art announced today the recent acquisition of nearly 70 works that significantly expand the museum’s celebrated permanent collection across multiple departments. The new acquisitions span from the late 16th century to the early 21st century, representing artistic traditions from Europe, Asia, and North America. Together, these works demonstrate the museum’s ongoing dedication to building a collection that reflects the breadth of human and artistic creativity.
Individually and collectively, these acquisitions strengthen key areas of the DIA’s permanent collection, including Italian Renaissance armor, German Expressionist painting, mid-century American photography, and contemporary Chinese conceptual photography.
Pompeo della Cesa (Milan, about 1537–1610), Cabasset (helmet) for Count von Schwarzenberg, about 1590, etched, gilt, and blackened steel with leather lining, overall: 8 1/4 × 9 × 8 1/4 inches, Museum Purchase, Joseph M. de Grimme Memorial Fund, DIA No. 2025.48
The new acquisitions include:
• Chinese Conceptual Photography, 1995–2004, various artists, China
• Photographs of Detroit, 1955, Robert Frank, United States
• Ewer and Basin, 1903, Gorham Manufacturing Company, United States
• Anorak, ca. 1900–1920, Inuit or Yupik, Arctic Circle
• Farmstead (Gehöft), ca. 1902, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Germany
• African Qur’an, Muhammad Ibn Muhammad (scribe), ca. 1800–1900, Chad or Nigeria
• Cabasset (helmet) for Count von Schwarzenberg, ca. 1590, Pompeo della Cesa, Italy
“The DIA is proud to welcome these dozens of historic and contemporary artworks that illuminate diverse styles, backgrounds, and artistic perspectives,” said DIA Director Salvador Salort-Pons. “Reaching back centuries, these works explore themes and ideas that connect our past, present, and future, providing our visitors with a deeper understanding of our world.”
Chinese Conceptual Photography, 1995–2004, various artists, China
This collection of 40 photographs by 12 contemporary Chinese artists represents a defining moment in art history, illustrating the first ten years of China’s groundbreaking New Photography movement. The works explore themes of identity, memory, consumerism, and rapid social transformation in post-Cultural Revolution China.
They document a revolutionary period when artists entered both the Chinese and international art scenes with entirely new approaches to photography, creating a distinct visual language. The dozen artists — Cang Xin, Hai Bo, Hong Hao, Hong Lei, Huang Yan, Qiu Zhijie, Rong Rong, Sheng Qi, Wang Jinsong, Wang Qingsong, Zhang Dali, and Zhang Huan — embraced conceptual photography, time-based media, and performance art to address cultural change, political history, urbanization, and the history of art and image-making in China. Eschewing traditional media such as painting and sculpture, this generation of artists worked with color and black-and-white photographs to transcend the history of Chinese visual art and illustrate complex social issues through unconventional image-making.
Gorham Manufacturing Co., Ewer, 1903 - 1904, silver. Detroit Institute of Arts, Museum Purchase, Dexter M. Ferry, Jr. Fund, Beatrice W. Rogers Fund, American Art Deaccession Funds by exchange, Lucy Waterman American Art Fund, 2025.47.1.
Highlights include selections from the Communication Series by Cang Xin who, after a period of self-exile, reacquainted himself with the world through photographs of the artist’s ritualistic licking of objects and places of cultural significance; photographs from Hai Bo’s They series, where he restaged portrait photographs from the Cultural Revolution; and Zhang Huan’s Foam series, featuring self-portraits of the artist’s foam-covered face as he opens his mouth to reveal old family photographs, offering a meditation on the transience of life, family, history, and identity in a rapidly changing China.
The acquisition, which greatly enriches the DIA’s collection of works by contemporary Asian artists, is a gift from collector Larry Warsh, New York.
Photographs of Detroit, 1955, Robert Frank, United States
This collection of 20 photographs from Robert Frank’s personal archive was gifted to the DIA by the June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation. Documenting Detroit and other U.S. cities at mid-century, Frank made the work during a year-long road trip funded by a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1955. Collectively, these works by one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century illustrate Frank’s genius for urban storytelling and the post-World War II human condition, while exploring the connection between Detroit’s automotive industry and, more broadly, the American Dream of prosperity and leisure.
Many of these rare photographs demonstrate Frank’s interest in working-class American life, including those made at Ford Motor Company Rouge Factory, in Detroit’s neighborhoods and on its streets, as well as everyday life across the city. Locations include Belle Isle, sites along Michigan Avenue, and various industrial and residential districts, providing a more comprehensive view of Detroit as a complex urban landscape rather than solely an industrial center.
Frank addresses themes of labor, social alienation, racial inequality, and the contradictions of a post-war American society in his photographs. His Detroit photographs became part of an extensive, groundbreaking series; several were included in the 1958 photobook Les Américains (released in the U.S. in 1959 as The Americans), and many were included in Frank’s later publications, exhibitions, and other endeavors. Among them is Detroit Movie House, which was reproduced on the Rolling Stones’ 1972 album Exile on Main Street.
Ewer and Basin, 1903, Gorham Manufacturing Company, United States
This significant silver ewer and basin set represents the pinnacle of American decorative arts during the Gilded Age, created by the Gorham Manufacturing Company as a showpiece for the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. Contemporary critics praised the set for its “artistic distinction,” celebrating individual craftsmanship over mass production.
Standing 30 inches tall with a basin diameter of 20 inches, this example from Gorham’s prestigious martelé line — meaning “hammered” in French — demonstrates the company’s artistry and technical mastery.
The richly detailed surfaces feature nymphs draped in flowing scarves, lily pads, and blossoms that swirl together in elaborate asymmetrical motifs. This required extraordinary skill, with silversmith Robert Bain spending more than 525 hours on the ewer, and over 375 hours on the basin to create ornate decorations using hand-hammering techniques.
Anorak, ca. 1900–1920, Inuit or Yupik, Arctic Circle
This Inuit or Yupik children’s anorak from 1900–1920 exemplifies centuries-old techniques and craftsmanship. It was created from seal or walrus intestinal strips that were cleaned, inflated, dried, and preserved, then sewn together with mammal tendons or plant fibers.
These waterproof and windproof anoraks were essential for Arctic survival and were often embellished with auklet beaks and feathers. The garment’s construction reflects knowledge passed down through generations, allowing Inuit, Yupik, and Aleutian communities to thrive in one of Earth’s harshest environments.
This acquisition expands the museum’s Arctic Circle collection beyond masks and carvings to include clothing, forming part of the foundation for the eventual reinstallation of the DIA’s Native American and Indigenous Americas galleries.
Farmstead (Gehöft), ca. 1902, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Germany
This landscape painting exemplifies Paula Modersohn-Becker’s experimental and radically modern approach to form during a crucial period in her artistic development. Created around 1902, Farmstead (Gehöft) shows her move toward a timeless simplicity stripped of anecdotal detail, a quality that would become central to the German Expressionism movement.
Executed on cardboard with thin layers of oil paint, the work depicts the distinctive architecture of Worpswede — the remote German village where Modersohn-Becker lived and worked in an artist colony. The composition features a partially visible farmhouse with mullioned windows and green shutters alongside a red barn, both rendered as elemental geometric forms under overcast skies.
This remarkable example of her pure landscape work — a genre she later abandoned — illustrates her progression toward the monumentality that would define her later figural paintings.
African Qur’an, ca. 1800–1900, Muhammad Ibn Muhammad (scribe), Chad or Nigeria
This Qur’an, originating from northern Nigeria or Chad and dating to the late 1800s or early 1900s, represents more than 1,000 years of Islamic presence in Sub-Saharan Africa. The manuscript measures 23.4 by 18 centimeters and contains 427 loose leaves bound with a leather strap. Each page has 14 lines of calligraphy, with yellow dots outlined in red separating verses and surah headings in red and yellow. Several vibrantly designed geometric panels appear throughout the text.
Remarkably, this Qur’an also came in a decorated leather bag, indicating it probably belonged to someone of means. It is also written in the Barnawi script — a variation of North Africa’s Maghribi style used across Northern Nigeria and Chad before 1900. Unlike similar others from previous auctions, this manuscript bears the signature of its scribe, Muhammad Ibn Muhammad, and includes a partial date of Sunday, 1st Ramadan, rendering it historically significant.
In acquiring this manuscript, the DIA can better underscore the distinctive character of West African Islam, which incorporates elements of traditional African religious beliefs and practices. The Qur’an will be displayed alongside garments decorated with protective leather amulets containing Qur’anic verses, illustrating Islam’s enduring and widespread cultural influence in the region.
Cabasset (helmet) for Count von Schwarzenberg, ca. 1590, by Pompeo della Cesa, Italy
This steel helmet was created by Pompeo della Cesa (ca. 1537–1610), one of the most renowned armorers in Milan during the late Renaissance. It is the first etched Italian armor piece to enter the DIA’s permanent collection.
Known for streamlined forms adorned with ornamental patterns and classical imagery applied through acid etching, della Cesa decorated this helmet with intricate figural scenes within gilt vertical bands surrounded by scrollwork, transforming a functional object into a work of Renaissance decorative art. The helmet retains its original gilding and crisp etching, hallmarks of the Milanese style that was highly sought after in Renaissance Europe.
Forged around 1590 as part of an interchangeable armor set for Count Adolf von Schwarzenberg (1551–1600) — commander of the Vienna City Guard and member of Emperor Rudolf II’s inner circle — this piece exemplifies the luxury “wardrobes in steel” designed for both combat and ceremonial use.
