DEETROIT, MICH.- The Detroit Institute of Arts announced its first-ever Mort Harris Curator of Automotive, Industrial, and Decorative Design, appointing Shelley Selim to the newly created role, which will focus on the narratives of transportation design and artistry throughout history and looking to the future. This new role will also allow the DIA to acquire and present the intersections and continuums of automotive, industrial, and decorative design.

“Detroit is known as the heart of the country’s automotive industry and holds unique significance in its innovation and evolution,” said Jill Shaw, head of Modern and Contemporary Art and Rebecca A. Boylan and Thomas W. Sidlik Curator of European Art, 1850–1970. “It’s only fitting that the museum establishes a curatorial position deeply connected with the city’s history, and I look forward to working with Shelley Selim to bring exciting art experiences to our communities.”

Selim will join the DIA in January 2024, arriving from the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, where she served as Curator of Design and Decorative Arts and developed the curatorial program for one of the largest museum design collections in the nation. She has curated, published, and lectured widely on topics related to modern and contemporary design, craft, and art.

Selim will work across departments to curate projects that celebrate the history and ingenuity of the art and design of American automotive industry. She will seek to build a collection that encompasses drawings, models, paintings, prints, photographs, posters, architectural renderings, digital media, and more, showcasing the ingenuity of the American automotive industry, with an emphasis on Detroit’s distinctive place in this history.

She will also explore connections with the fields of design and decorative arts, and how all these disciplines can reciprocate trends in industry, economy, technology, culture, and style. Additionally, her role will provide guidance to the museum’s Learning and Audience Engagement division for educational work related to this collection, with a special focus on the DIAs school programs.

Selim’s work will be part of the DIA’s James Pearson Duffy Department of Modern and Contemporary Art, a creative platform for the exploration of how design in its many forms can both reflect and lead contemporary art and culture.

“We are proud to welcome Shelley Selim to the growing curatorial team of the DIA,” said Judith F. Dolkart, deputy director for Art, Education, and Programs at the DIA. “Her unique expertise in design and decorative arts makes her ideal to develop a new area for the museum centered on the artistry and culture of one of Detroit’s and modernity’s most iconic innovations, the automobile.”

“I am thrilled to join the Detroit Institute of Arts in this specially created position,” said Selim. “The fields of industrial, decorative, and automotive design are inextricably linked, and I look forward to shining a light on them in an art museum context, in a city so pivotal to the history of American design and industry.”

During her time at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Selim curated numerous exhibitions on modern and contemporary art and design, including a major reinstallation of the museum’s design gallery. Selim was a member of a collaborative group that developed a Conservation Management Plan (CMP) for the Miller House and Garden, funded by a grant from the Getty Foundation’s Keeping it Modern initiative. Prior to her role at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Selim was the Jeanne and Ralph Graham Assistant Curator at Cranbrook Art Museum. Her exhibitions at Cranbrook included John Glick: A Legacy in Clay; Culture Breakers: The Living Structures of Ken Isaacs; The Cranbrook Hall of Wonders: Artworks, Objects, and Natural Curiosities; and Bent, Cast & Forged: The Jewelry of Harry Bertoia. Prior to her arrival at Cranbrook, she was a curatorial assistant at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York.

For her exhibitions on Glick and Bertoia, Selim also served as editor and essayist for the accompanying exhibition catalogs. Additional essays by Selim have appeared in the publications Commercial Article; With Eyes Opened: Cranbrook Academy of Art Since 1932; My Brain Is in My Inkstand: Drawing as Thinking and Process; What if Textiles: The Art of Gerhardt Knodel; and Detroit Research, among others.

The position is very generously supported by a transformative gift from the Mort and Brigitte Harris Foundation. Mort Harris, with his wife Brigitte, was a decades-long leader, ardent supporter at the Detroit Institute of Arts and a generous philanthropist, having donated tens of millions of dollars to southeast Michigan organizations. A decorated WWII pilot, Harris was co-founder of auto-industry supplier American Axel & Manufacturing, Inc., and died in 2021 at the age of 101.

The DIA’s new collection in this area was launched with a generous gift in September 2022 of 91 automotive drawings from Julie Hyde-Edwards, which represents decades of study, collecting, and advocacy by Julie and her late husband Robert Edwards on behalf of Detroit car designers and the art they produced.