Midwest art museum reshapes its role in the community - Flint Institute of Arts

"The Flint Institute of Arts (FIA) cut its teeth on hard times, opening as a community art school in 1928, a year before the start of the Great Depression. To raise money for its first acquisition as a museum, staff hung a small box next to a borrowed painting, and students and visitors were encouraged to donate towards it purchase...

...The FIA also continues to put a great deal of thought into the exhibits they host -- with the express purpose of appealing to ever wider audiences who will add energy and excitement to the institution. Its recent exhibit “Comics, Heroes, and American Visual Culture,” sponsored by the National Endowment of the Arts and the Mott Foundation, generated a surprising amount of visitor traffic. A companion exhibit, “Beyond the Frame: African-American Comic Book Artists,” was organized by the FIA in collaboration with John Jennings, a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and comic book industry artist Robert Stull.

“It’s a genius idea,” said Matt Osmon, a local high school art teacher and frequent gallery visitor who applauds FIA’s willingness to experiment with “crazy, young stuff.”

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