Dear Members and Friends,
This morning, we welcomed back members and tri-county residents to your DIA after closing our doors more than 16 weeks ago. We are grateful for the extraordinary support we have received from the residents of Macomb, Oakland and Wayne counties, and are eager to return to serving our community. Next Wednesday, July 15, we will open to all visitors.
As we implement our strategy to safely welcome all of you back to our galleries, I want to invite each of you to return and experience all the DIA has to offer, but in a new way.
Like other cultural destinations, organizations and businesses around the world, we are slowly getting back to work, but for now, it will not be business as usual.
You'll see your longtime favorites, such as Diego Rivera's Detroit Industry murals, William Bouguereau's The Nut Gatherers and Kehinde Wiley's Officer of the Hussars, but you will be required to wear a mask at all times and remain at least six feet apart from other visitors and staff.
We've extended many of the exhibitions that were on view when we closed, including Michigan's Great Lakes: Photographs by Jeff Gaydash; Guests of Honor: Frida Kahlo and Salvador Dalí, and Bruegel's The Wedding Dance Revealed. All are free with museum admission, which for the upcoming weeks will be free to all visitors. With new single points of entry and exit for each suite of galleries, I hope you'll experience something new and surprising during your visit, while traveling safely through the museum.
I'm grateful to the experts at NSF International who worked with us to develop a comprehensive guide to safely reopen. New cleaning protocols mean you'll probably see more of our dedicated Environmental Services team at work ensuring all our public spaces remain clean and sanitized throughout the day. Our Interpretive and Collections Management teams have creatively adapted many of our hands-on visitor engagements, such as our popular "Eye Spys," to be touch-free while still allowing for an engaging visitor experience for all ages.
While we can't currently offer our more popular programs, including school field trips, senior activities, art-making and the Detroit Film Theatre, those colleagues have been busy over the past four months moving many of those enriching experiences online for you to enjoy at home. We'll continue to provide these online offerings until we are able to return to presenting programming at the museum.
If you haven't already reserved your timed ticket for a visit this weekend or in the coming weeks, I hope you'll do so. You can reserve tickets and learn more about our reopening plans at www.dia.org/reopening. All of us at the DIA are excited to welcome you back!
With gratitude,
