One of the most important museums in the US, the Detroit Institute of Arts covers over 600,000 square feet with more than 100 galleries. The museum was founded in the 1880s, but moved to the current building in 1927. The museum is known for its comprehensive collection that spans the globe and several millennia. The collections are divided by world region. The American section includes paintings and sculpture as well as decorative arts from the Colonial era up to the 20th century. European works span the period from antiquity to 1950. The museum also boasts comprehensive collections of Asian, Islamic, African, and indigenous art from the Americas.
One of the museum's most noted works is Detroit Industry by Mexican-American painter Diego Rivera, which he considered to be his most important work. The mural paintings were commissioned by famed museum curator Wilhelm Valentiner, who was responsible for the emergence of the Detroit Institute of Arts as one of the country's leading museums. The 27 frescoes that make up the piece depict scenes at the Ford Motor Company and were completed in 1932 and 1933. Rivera spent several months at Ford plants observing, taking photographs, and making preliminary sketches. Rivera was a known Marxist, and that fact coupled with some of the imagery in the murals stoked controversy when they were unveiled. The murals were variously denigrated as sacrilegious and anti-American, and some members of the Detroit religious community even demanded that the murals be destroyed. Luckily, cooler heads prevailed. The frescoes are still one of the top reasons to visit the museum.
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