One of the DIA’s most beloved American paintings is in the spotlight — but only for a few more days. Guests of Honor: Frederic Church’s Cotopaxi, on view in the American galleries through October 25, 2026, celebrates the 200th anniversary of the great landscape painter’s birth.
The intimate exhibition centers on the museum’s breathtaking 1862 canvas Cotopaxi, which depicts Ecuador’s volcanic peak in dramatic light. It is joined by three additional works by Church on loan from the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, along with a landscape by Rémy Louis Mignot, who traveled with Church to South America. Together, the works reveal how Church turned close observation and scientific curiosity into scenes of awe-inspiring power.
The presentation is the tenth in the DIA’s Guests of Honor series, which brings extraordinary works from collections around the world to Detroit. The Detroit Institute of Arts is at 5200 Woodward Avenue; tri-county residents receive free admission through the regional millage.
