The Bronson Park district in downtown Kalamazoo is home to some of this western Michigan city's most historic sites, a vibrant art scene, and the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts.
We enjoyed an eclectic juxtaposition of vintage and contemporary during our recent stay at The Kalamazoo House, a bed-and-breakfast in an 1878-vintage home, literally a few steps away from the Modern-style museum.
We visited the museum on a quiet week day after several special exhibitions closed, and with incoming special exhibitions not yet in place, so several galleries were not open. Still, we found plenty to enjoy with the museum's permanent exhibits and exploring the building.
In 1924, art activists established the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts (KIA) to offer classes and to establish and maintain a museum. Their mission of encouraging the creation and appreciation of art remains the museum's key focus.
The KIA began operating in an old home on loan to them. The organization finally got a full-time director and began offering classes in 1931, and the museum moved into its first permanent home in an old Victorian mansion in 1947.
In 1961, the KIA built a modern glass-and-slab style building next to the gracious old mansion that is now the bed-and-breakfast inn. The architectural firm of Skidmore, Owning, and Merrill based the new museum's design on the ideas of German architect Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe.
The building exemplified the International architecture style, which first emerged in the 1920s and 1930s as one of the first styles to include Modern elements like glass walls, slab-like construction, and exposed columns like those pioneered by Mies Van Der Rohe.
The spacious new building allowed museum officials to begin actively increasing the collection.
The KIA currently has about 4,000 pieces in its permanent collection, emphasizing modern American painting, as well as American and European prints and drawings, photography, sculpture and contemporary ceramics.
Some of my favorite pieces I saw during our visit included American paintings like Glenn O. Coleman's "Brooklyn Bridge", John Stockton De Martelly's "Looking at the Sunshine", and Andy Warhol's portrait of President Gerald R. Ford.
The piece in the collection most people may remember when they think of the museum is the "Kalamazoo Ruby Light Chandelier" by glass artist Dale Chihuly. Chihuly's 1998 showy creation of 400 pieces of red, orange, and yellow glass and wire greets visitors as they walk into the museum's two-story South Park Street entrance. Guests staying in some rooms at The Kalamazoo House have a particularly spectacular view of the piece at night, although I got my best night-time photo of Chihuly's chandelier by shooting up through the glass wall of the museum's entrance one evening.
The Chihuly came to the museum after its last major renovation in 1994. The architectural firm of Ann Beha Associates designed an expansion to preserve the museum's sleek International-style features while adding 30,000 square feet to the existing building. The building is now 72,000 square feet and includes the two-story lobby, open public spaces, a technologically modern auditorium, an interactive gallery for kids, as well as ten galleries, classrooms, an art library, a gallery shop with work from many local artists, administrative offices and workrooms.
An estimated 100,000 museum visitors view the permanent collections and 10 to 15 changing exhibitions each year.
The KIA established the Kalamazoo Art Fair in 1951 as a showcase for local artists to exhibit and sell their work. The Kalamazoo Art Fair, which celebrates its sixtieth anniversary this summer, draws more than 60,000 visitors each year and takes place during early June in nearby Bronson Park.
The Kirk Newman Art School at the KIA holds more than 300 classes for more than 3,000 students of all ages each year. The museum named the school in 2006 for a local sculptor whose significant pieces include the "People" sculpture in front of the museum, a grouping of sculptures of children in Bronson Park, and the "On the Move" bronze silhouettes of commuters I've seen many times at Detroit's Michigan Avenue People Mover station.
I hope visit the KIA again, maybe making a weekend of it by staying at The Kalamazoo House, catching an Art Hop (an informal monthly event featuring multiple art exhibits around town), visiting the city's numerous galleries, checking out the current exhibits at the KIA, and further exploring the wonderfully walkable downtown Kalamazoo.
Read more about our visit to the city at The Kalamazoo House: An urban B&B in southwest Michigan.
Be sure to check out Kalamazoo Michigan by David Kohrman, an Arcadia Press book with lots of vintage photos of the city, or get your own reproduction of a vintage poster from Works Projects Administration (WPA) for the KIA's 1936 membership drive.
© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved
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