Kalamazoo Institute of Arts

Join us ✨tomorrow✨ as we kick off summer at the 75th Annual KIA Arts Fair! You'll find 140+ fine artists selling original works in 12 distinct categories, art demonstrations, family fun, food trucks, live music, and free KIA gallery admission.

🔗 Save this post, or visit kiarts.org/arts-fair to see the full weekend schedule and map of artist booths in Bronson Park.

👟‼️ Future Now: Virtual Sneakers to Cutting-Edge Kicks is stepping out after this weekend. You can experience the exhibition for free during the KIA Arts Fair on Friday & Saturday before it closes after Sunday, June 7. Discover how cutting-edge technologies, unexepected materials, and new ideas have transformed footwear.

Future Now is co-organized by the American Federation of Arts and the Bata Shoe Museum and curated by Elizabeth Semmelhack, Director and Senior Curator, Bata Shoe Museum.

This exhibition at the KIA is made possible, in part, with generous support from Stryker Careers , Si & Shirley Johnson, Efroymson Family Fund, V & A Bootery , Mitten Running Co. , Carole & Samuel Cupps, Kalamazoo Valley Community College, Warner Norcross + Judd, and Adams Outdoor

The work of West Michigan’s talented artistic community is now on view in the 2026 West Michigan Area Show. This crowd-pleasing annual juried exhibition was carefully curated from more than 500 submitted entries, ranging from paintings, prints, and photos to mosaics, ceramics, jewelry, sculpture, and mixed-media works.

Thanks to our sponsors: CWS Financial Advisors, and David Isaacson, in memory of his wife, Helen Sheridan.

🎶 KIA Arts Fair Performer Spotlight 🎭

Enjoy live music in Bronson Park this weekend on the Peregrine Stage, co-presented by the KIA and Sounds of the Zoo! The 75th Annual KIA Arts Fair entertainment lineup includes:

Friday, 6:30pm: Theatre Kalamazoo! performs a musical review with local talent. Theater Kalamazoo is is a non-profit collaboration between the live theatres in Kalamazoo, MI whose goal is to help make theatre more accessible to the public.

Saturday, 12pm: Dylan Tolbert is a multi-talented multi-instrumentalist playing at various venues across Michigan and Northern Indiana. Tolbert will be showcasing their talents through originals to a range of covers.

Saturday, 1:30pm: Payton&Annabelle is a dynamic duo blending folk and alternative genres characterized by rich harmonies and intricate acoustic guitar arrangements.

Saturday, 3pm: Kalamazoo’s own the Mickeys blend Indie and Americana music, creating their own unique sound featuring twin harmonies, powerful guitar, and stylish bass.

🎉 Cultural Exchange Month starts tomorrow!

From June 1–30, your KIA membership grants you free admission to 6 amazing Southwest Michigan destinations:

✈️ Air Zoo
🦁 Binder Park Zoo
🚘 Gilmore Car Museum
🌲 Kalamazoo Nature Center
🦢 W.K. Kellogg Bird Sanctuary & Manor House
🖼️ ...and of course, the KIA!

It was a full house for the Members’ Preview & Awards Ceremony for the 2026 West Michigan Area Show! Thank you to everyone who joined us to celebrate. WMAS is now on view through September 27.

Congratulations to our award winners:

• Helen Sheridan Memorial Grand Prize: Beth Purdy, Prosperity
• Second Place: Michael Dixon, The Embrace
• Third Place: Guadalupe Perez-Duran, Where Light Finds Us
• Fourth Place: Erin Mullis, Pansy Party
• Fifth Place: Libby Bergeon, The Three of Us
• Director's Purchase Prize: Sydney Higgins, Native Michigan Orchids
• Portage Community Art Award: Larry Sandt, Snowy Egret
• Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo’s People’s Choice Award: The Beast In Me, Dan Giancaspro
• The Martin Maddox Prize for Imaginative Realism: Lauren Tripp, Fine and Fancy
• Ninth Wave Studio Award for Ingenuity in Mixed Media or Intermedia: Heather Boersma, What She Carried
• Kalamazoo Art League Award for Excellence in Any Media: Douglas Brinks, Basket Weave Illusion,
• West Michigan Potters Guild Award for Ceramics: Caitlin Zachow, Put it on the shelf.
• Eclectic Glass Guild of Southwest Michigan: Judy Hallisy, Before First Light
• Kalamazoo Log Cabin Quilters’ Art Quilt Award: Nikki Horner, Hate Has No Home Here
• Southwest Michigan Printmakers Excellence in Printmaking Award: Felix Sunflower, we're going to have to say hello eventually
• Kalamazoo Book Arts Center Book, Print, and Paper Award: Jordan Szala, The Other Room

The West Michigan Area Show is made possible thanks to generous support from CWS Financial Advisors, and David Isaacson, in memory of his wife, Helen Sheridan.

Just 1 week to go until the KIA Arts Fair! 🌻

Jumpstart Weekend is just about a week away, and Downtown Kalamazoo is getting ready to kick off summer in a big way!

From art fairs and live music to parades, family activities, celebrations, local shopping, food, and entertainment, this annual tradition brings together some of Kalamazoo’s favorite events all in one weekend.

Join us June 5–7 for the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts Fair, Art on the Mall, Kalamazoo Pride, the Do-Dah Parade, Concerts in the Park, and activities at the Children’s Nature Playscape.

You can even start the celebration early with Beats on Bates beginning June 3!

Whether you spend the whole weekend downtown or stop by for a favorite event, Jumpstart Weekend is the perfect way to start summer in Kalamazoo.

Learn more at www.jumpstartkzoo.com.

1991 ➡️ 2025

Like several returning artists, Samuel Yao has had a booth at KIA Arts Fairs for many years. He sold his hand-woven sculptural baskets at the 40th in 1991, and he’ll be joining us again for the 75th next Friday & Saturday!

📷 2025 photo by Colleen Woolpert

UNFRAMED: Soirée will return this fall! Save the date for October 17 for a spectacular evening as we honor Jim and Carol Carter and raise vital funds for the KIA.

What does it mean to curate as we live through apocalyptic times?

🗓️ At Wednesday's ArtBreak, join our 2026 West Michigan Area Show juror, Dr. Xuxa Rodríguez, as she offers reflections and proposals for working and living through difficult times to find meaning and hope even in the darkest of days.

Xuxa Rodríguez, Ph.D., is a curator, scholar, and writer, originally from Miami, FL. Her expertise ranges across modern and contemporary Latinx and Latin American Art, African diasporic art, feminist and q***r art, transnational artists, and time-based media, with strengths in performance and video. Now based in Durham, NC, she is the Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasher Curator of Contemporary Art at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. Photo by Kat Wilson.