Legendary Voices: Art for the Next Century

For 100 years, the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts has served as an art museum and community-based art school for local, regional, and national audiences. In honor of our centennial, the KIA is proud to present Legendary Voices: Art for the Next Century. This exciting exhibition pairs and occasionally groups artworks from different periods, artists, and genres creating compelling connections and dialogues, while also illuminating the breadth of the KIA’s collection. Themes such as abstraction, environment, identity, and portraiture converge with artistic expressions and innovative practices offering shared narratives and often unexpected parallels. These thoughtful and at times, unusual, selections offer new perspectives and deeper insights into artistic processes spanning several centuries, while also emphasizing notable events and moments during the last century. Legendary Voices: Art for the Next Century also explores how artists grapple with the human condition, question society’s most pressing issues, and draw from their unique cultural contexts and individual experiences. Expect new and familiar works in dialogues that offer fresh ways to consider age-old subjects and genres of artmaking, while also celebrating the distinctiveness of the KIA’s collection, its arts school, and educational programs.

Be inspired this fall by the stories and aesthetic ingenuity of artists local to global who have helped to shape our exceptional, indeed legendary, collection and community.