Community Calendar

The Great KIA Book Swap returns! Bring gently used books to the KIA to trade for new-to-you titles! We are excited to offer this sustainable reading opportunity to our community. Music and refreshments will be provided. Enter a raffle for great prizes from our sponsors! Receive one raffle ticket per book, with a limit of five tickets per person. You must be present at the time of the drawing to win raffle prizes. Please no textbooks, encyclopedias or magazines. Books should be in good physical condition—no moldy, torn, or damaged books. Keep in mind that this is a book swap, so bring a book in the condition that you would want to receive.

Please note that this event will not be livestreamed or posted on YouTube.

Get ready to explore the color blue with Art Detectives this April! We’ll read a book that shows how artists discovered and used blue throughout history. Then we’ll explore the exhibition From Cobalt to Indigo: The Power of Blue in East Asia to see how East Asian artists use blue in their creations. After our gallery adventure, we’ll make our own brilliant blue artwork to take home.

Please note that this event will not be livestreamed or posted on YouTube.
Art Detectives is a free program for children 4-8 years old (but all ages are welcome). Join us as we read a story, look at art, and make a project to take home. Caregivers must stay with their children at all times. This is a free program; preregistration is encouraged. Adults, remember to register your children!

Homeschool families are invited to learn, create, and explore at the KIA and the Kalamazoo Valley Museum (KVM). This collaborative event offers interactive activities designed to promote interdisciplinary learning, creativity, and an appreciation for art, history, and science. This event highlights the Future Now: Virtual Sneakers to Cutting-Edge Kicks exhibit. Bring your creativity and wear your favorite shoes! This event is included with the cost of KIA admission. View admission prices at kiarts.org/connect-visit/plan-your-visit.

Future Now: Virtual Sneakers to Cutting-Edge Kicks is co-organized by the American Federation of Arts and the Bata Shoe Museum, and curated by Elizabeth Semmelhack, Director and Senior Curator of the Bata Shoe Museum.

Please note that this event will not be livestreamed or posted on YouTube.

When ten year old Mona experiences a sudden, brief loss of sight, her grandfather Henry decides to give her a gallery of artworks to visit in her mind as she faces potential permanent blindness. Through fifty-two weekly trips to museums in Paris, Mona recieves an emotional art history education. Art lessons become tied to life lessons on love, fear, and beauty. Their relationship strenthens as Henry gives Mona more than a deep appreciation of art.

Please note that this event will not be livestreamed or posted on YouTube.
All book discussions are free, open to the public, and take place in-person at the Meader Fine Arts Library. Participants do not need to have read the book, but it will help facilitate the overall discussion. Preregistration is encouraged.

Meet a living legend in the world of of shoe design! During this Artful Evening, Wilson W. Smith III will speak about his prolific career in the athletic footwear industry. The first Black designer for Nike, Smith has created shoes for Michael Jordan, Andre Agassi, Serena Williams, and many more. After a 41-year career with the company, Smith retired as the Manager of Design Eduation with Nike’s Blue-Ribbon Studio in 2025. His work has been recognized with a number of prestigious awards, including Nike’s inaugural Design Achievement Award in 2019. In 2024, Detroit’s Pensole Lewis College, the nation’s only design-focused HBCU, dedicated the Wilson W. Smith III Footwear Design Studio. Join us to learn more about the passion and artistry that have driven Smith’s remarkable career and his life’s work in design and education.

Thank you to our event sponsor:

Warner Norcross & Judd

All hybrid events will be livestreamed to our YouTube page and can be found under the “Live” tab. Recordings of select past events are available on YouTube as well.

As we celebrate the future of shoes, it can be fascinating to look back to see where we have already been. During this ArtBreak talk, fashion historian and professor Iris Carney Cooper will offer an overview of notable and special shoe designs throughout time, discussing history, significance, function, and design.

Cooper is a fashion historian, currently teaching at Western Michigan University and managing the Historic Garment Collection. She received her BA in Fashion Design and Merchandising from Dominican University in River Forest, IL, and her Graduate Certificate in History from WMU.

All hybrid events will be livestreamed to our YouTube page and can be found under the “Live” tab. Recordings of select past events are available on YouTube as well.

Join us for a special Artful Evening with Elizabeth Semmelhack, Director and Senior Curator of the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto! Semmelhack is the curator of Future Now: Virtual Sneakers to Cutting-Edge Kicks. During this program, she will talk about why shoes matter and about how designers today are revolutionizing what we will put on our feet tomorrow. If you’ve enjoyed Future Now, don’t miss this opportunity to meet the curator behind the exhibition!

Semmelhack’s work focuses on the intersections of fashion, culture, and economics, with a particular interest in the history of footwear. She is widely quoted in the media from the New York Times to Vogue, and since starting at the Bata Shoe Museum in 2000, she has curated over thirty exhibitions and written fourteen books and catalogues and over thirty chapters and articles. Her most recent exhibitions and publications related to sneakers include Art/Wear: Sneakers x Artists (2024), Future Now: Virtual Sneakers to Cutting-Edge Kicks (Rizzoli:2022), Collab: Sneakers x Culture (Rizzoli: 2019), and Out of the Box: The Rise of Sneaker Culture (Rizzoli: 2015).

Future Now: Virtual Sneakers to Cutting-Edge Kicks is co-organized by the American Federation of Arts and the Bata Shoe Museum, and curated by Elizabeth Semmelhack, Director and Senior Curator of the Bata Shoe Museum.

All hybrid events will be livestreamed to our YouTube page and can be found under the “Live” tab. Recordings of select past events are available on YouTube as well.

Inspired by the innovation and history of sneakers, we will provide origami paper to fold your own mini shoe! A variety of styles and difficulty levels will be provided. Check out the exhibition Future Now: Virtual Sneakers to Cutting-Edge Kicks for inspiration and then drop by the library to try your hand at this detailed paper project.

Future Now: Virtual Sneakers to Cutting-Edge Kicks is co-organized by the American Federation of Arts and the Bata Shoe Museum, and curated by Elizabeth Semmelhack, Director and Senior Curator of the Bata Shoe Museum.

Please note that this event will not be livestreamed or posted on YouTube.

This short collaboration celebrates sneaker culture through poetry. Consisting of two parts, part one is a micro saga-in verse about a quest to find sneakers but yields an even great discovery beyond shoes. Part two is a collection of prose poems, a kind of mixtape, which explores many aspects of sneaker culture from overarching artistic reflections to personal ties to footwear. Themes in this book will tie into Future Now: Virtual Sneakers to Cutting-Edge Kicks.

Future Now: Virtual Sneakers to Cutting-Edge Kicks is co-organized by the American Federation of Arts and the Bata Shoe Museum, and curated by Elizabeth Semmelhack, Director and Senior Curator of the Bata Shoe Museum.

Please note that this event will not be livestreamed or posted on YouTube.
All book discussions are free, open to the public, and take place in-person at the Meader Fine Arts Library. Participants do not need to have read the book, but it will help facilitate the overall discussion. Preregistration is encouraged.

This short collaboration celebrates sneaker culture through poetry. Consisting of two parts, part one is a micro saga-in verse about a quest to find sneakers but yields an even great discovery beyond shoes. Part two is a collection of prose poems, a kind of mixtape, which explores many aspects of sneaker culture from overarching artistic reflections to personal ties to footwear. Themes in this book will tie into Future Now: Virtual Sneakers to Cutting-Edge Kicks.

Future Now: Virtual Sneakers to Cutting-Edge Kicks is co-organized by the American Federation of Arts and the Bata Shoe Museum, and curated by Elizabeth Semmelhack, Director and Senior Curator of the Bata Shoe Museum.

Please note that this event will not be livestreamed or posted on YouTube.
All book discussions are free, open to the public, and take place in-person at the Meader Fine Arts Library. Participants do not need to have read the book, but it will help facilitate the overall discussion. Preregistration is encouraged.