Things to do this week

Van Gogh in America is on view through Jan. 22, 2023 at the Detroit Institute of Arts; 5200 Woodward Ave., Detroit; 313-833-7900; dia.org. Tickets are $7-$29, with discounted tickets for residents of Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb counties, and free for DIA members.

“Fluorescent sodalite-bearing syenite” is a mouthful, but these glowing rocks from the U.P. are also known as Yooperlite.

COURTESY PHOTO

Select events happening in metro Detroit this week. See venue websites for information on COVID-19 policies.

The 77th Greater Detroit Gem, Mineral & Fossil Show is this weekend, and one of the rocks taking the spotlight is called Yooperlite.

You’re probably asking what the heck is Yooperlite, and whether it’s a real thing or just a made-up name. Technically, it’s a real thing with a made-up name. Yooperlites were discovered on the shores of Lake Superior by a local dude named Erik Rintamaki.

They look like regular old rocks to the naked eye, but under UV light they glow like some kind of freaky space rock burning inside with lava. Rintamaki dubbed them “Yooperlites” because he’s a Yooper (someone from the U.P., obviously). The rocks are found in Michigan’s pper eninsula, specifically along the coast of Lake Superior. Technically it’s uorescent sodalite bearing syenite, but that’s a mouthful, so Yooperlite it is.

Rintamaki will be at the gem and mineral show at Macomb Community College in Warren Oct. 7-9 with tons of the stuff. The gem show will also have nearly 70 vendors selling crystals, minerals, authentic fossils, jewelry, and more.

Dave Lurie, president of the Michigan mineralogical society, says there will be more hands-on activities this year. The event was canceled in 2020 and had fewer interactive exhibits last year due to COVID-19.

This year, visitors can get up close and personal with the minerals, observe them under a microscope, dig for fossils, and fill up grab bags with as many gemstones as they can. There will also be wire wrapping jewelry demonstrations and door prizes.

“What draws people in is the beauty of nature,” Lurie tells us. “It’s the fascination with having a mineral formed millions of years ago that’s perfect in shape and beautiful in color. Kids especially tend to like fossils a lot because they’re 300 or 400 million years old, and just the idea of something being that old right in front of you is fascinating.”

Even if you’re not the type to get excited by fossils or understands the healing properties of crystals, Lurie says the gem and mineral show is a fun educational outing for families.

“We’ve also been giving out a scholarship to a geology student who’s a senior at Wayne State [University] in the geology program and we’re very excited about that because it’s giving back to the city,” he adds.

The first 2 attendees each day will get a free quartz crystal, so get there early.

From 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Friday, Oct. 7; 10 a.m-7 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 8; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 9 at the Macomb Community College South Campus/ Expo Center; 14500 E. 12 Mile Rd., Warren. More information is available at michmin.org. Tickets range from $3-$9.

A century ago, the Detroit Institute of Arts was way ahead of the curve when it became the first . . museum to purchase a painting by Vincent Van Gogh. That was his 1887 “Self-Portrait,” a . inch by . inch oil painting made several years before the painter would die by suicide.

That fateful purchase a century ago helped set the stage for Van Gogh in America, a retrospective of the iconic artist’s career that opened to the public on Sunday. “Not everyone can go to Paris. Not everyone can go to Amsterdam,” DIA director Salvador SalortPons said during opening remarks at a media preview event on Thursday, adding, “We have a phenomenal assembly of paintings by Van Gogh. And also, we have ‘Starry Night’ from Paris.”

“Starry Night,” on loan from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, was an 11th-hour addition to the years-in-the-making exhibition, which was postponed from 2020 due to the pandemic. It was also eclipsed in the past year by two dueling “immersive digital exhibitions profiting off of Van ogh’s wor . The IA show, however, is the largest Van Gogh exhibition in years, and includes more than 70 works on loan from roughly 60 museums and collections all over the world.

At first, the art world did not seem to know what to make of Van Gogh. He reportedly sold very few paintings in his life, but was eventually embraced after death, after museums like the DIA helped boost his profile. And there was something about his paintings that seemed to really resonate with Americans, especially from the heartland. The next U.S. museums to purchase Van Goghs were also in the Midwest, including the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, the Saint Louis Art Museum, and the Toledo Museum of Art.

“Van Gogh in America tells the story of how Americans shaped in their hearts and minds the image of Van Gogh,” Salort-Pons said.

If you go — and you should — take your time. No photograph or digital reproduction can do Van Gogh’s radiant brushstrokes justice, so it’s best to experience them in person.

An interactive pollinator habitat, snakes, frogs, and salamanders await the return of visitors to the Belle Isle Nature Center.

The center has been closed since March 2020, and has undergone extensive renovation both inside and out. It reopened last month.

Additions to the nature center include an expansive play area for kids, better habitats for turtles, bullfrogs, snakes, and reptiles, and a sewer-tunnel walk-through that allows “visitors to learn about and explore the areas where city infrastructure and wildlife connect.”

“We’ve completely reimagined a new nature center that puts the focus on urban wildlife,” said Amy Greene, nature centers director for the Detroit Zoological Society, in a press release. “Our intention is to reinforce the connections people have and the spaces they share with the nature that surrounds us. We want people to feel that nature is where we already are — we just have to notice and appreciate it.”

A newly renovated lobby will also feature reclaimed materials from the original Belle Isle Zoo, which disgraced former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick opted to close in 2002. The Belle Isle Nature Center then opened to replace the zoo, with bond money granted by the city council to fund the zoo’s reopening. ther renovations include a oor to-ceiling bird viewing bay and an immersive frog and toad crawl-through that allows visitors to get up close and personal with see-through domes inside the habitat.

The Belle Isle Nature Center is located at 176 Lakeside Dr., Detroit; 313-852-4056; belleislenaturecenter.detroitzoo.org. Admission is free.