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Valerie Mercer and the Long Work of Putting African American Art Where It Belongs

After more than two decades of methodical acquisitions and a landmark reinstallation, the DIA's lead curator of African American art reflects on what it takes to transform a museum's identity from the inside out.

When the Detroit Institute of Arts unveiled its newly reinstalled galleries dedicated to African American art last fall, the most important change wasn’t simply curatorial—it was topographic. For decades, works by Black artists had been scattered throughout the museum or relegated to the quieter corners of the modern wing. Now, after a major rehang, they sit at the heart of the institution, steps from Diego Rivera’s massive Detroit Industry Murals, the museum’s most visited landmark, prominently placed in the institution’s narrative of American culture.

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The architect of the shift is lead curator of African American art Valerie Mercer, who joined the museum in 2001 after formative years at the Studio Museum in Harlem with a mandate to transform a thinly represented area of the collection into a defining strength. At the time, the museum held only a handful of works by African American artists, but Mercer approached the task with the pragmatism of a historian, methodically acquiring pieces that would allow the museum to tell a fuller, more accurate story of American art.

In “Reimagine African American Art,” the reinstallation traces a lineage that stretches from nineteenth-century painters such as Robert S. Duncanson—a major figure in his own time who later slipped from mainstream art history—to twentieth-century innovators like Sam Gilliam. The four galleries move through key cultural moments, including the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement, while foregrounding artists whose contributions have often been sidelined in canonical surveys.

The significance of the rehang lies not only in the elevation of deserving talent but also in the culmination of a decades-long institutional recalibration. By moving African American art from the margins of the museum to its literal center, DIA has turned Mercer’s curatorial project into a permanent structural commitment. Observer recently sat down with her to discuss her role in the evolution of the museum’s collection, what she hoped to accomplish with the reinstallation and the public’s response.

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