The Detroit Institute of Art has artworks from ancient to modern times. For each time period, they have good short essays about the cultures and the artists. That is followed by examples of masterpieces in their collections.

1. African, Oceanic and Indigenous Americans The Department oversees four separate collection segments: the arts of Africa, Egypt, the South Pacific, and the Indigenous Americas. Reflecting current scholarship and geography, Egyptian art is now a sub-section of this department. African art thus consists of works from the rest of Africa other than Egypt.

2. The Arts of Asia and the Islamic World The collections of the Department of the Arts of Asia and the Islamic World at the Detroit Institute of Arts comprise thousands of works of art produced in Asia and Middle East, from antiquity through the present, as well as from North Africa and Islamic Spain. Conceived as a both a geographical and cultural area of study, the Department fosters research into individual works of art in their historical and cultural contexts, the connections between the artistic cultures of this immense region – both geographical and temporal – as well as cultural and artistic ties between Asia, the Islamic World, Europe, and Africa. At present, the collections of the art of the Ancient Middle East and the Islamic World comprise some 1,300 objects, and the arts of Asia some 2,600 objects. Collecting in these fields began in Detroit in the 1890s, and continues today.