The Detroit Institute of Arts has received more than 2,000 modern and contemporary artworks from the estate of Detroit collectors Gilbert B. and Lila Silverman, a transformative donation that the museum says is among the most significant in its history.

The gift contains works by nearly 500 artists and spans a wide range of formats, including paintings, sculpture, photography, furniture, jewelry, textiles, artists’ books, documentation of performances and time-based media. Rather than remaining within one area of the museum, the collection will be divided among six curatorial departments, reflecting the Silvermans’ broad interests and the increasingly interdisciplinary character of modern art.

Those departments include modern and contemporary art, African American art, American art, European sculpture and decorative arts, Native American art, and prints, drawings and photographs. The distribution means the donation will influence multiple parts of the DIA’s permanent collection, future exhibitions and research programs.

A selection of the works is expected to make its public debut in November, when the museum reopens its renovated Modern and Contemporary Art galleries. The DIA has not announced how many pieces will be displayed initially or published a complete checklist. It said additional information about the renovation, gallery design and reinstallation will be released later.

Among the best-known artists represented in the gift are Joseph Beuys, Marcel Duchamp, Jeff Koons, Barbara Kruger, Glenn Ligon, Bruce Nauman, Diego Rivera, Bill Viola and Andy Warhol. The donation also brings work by several artists into the DIA’s collection for the first time, including Vito Acconci, Diane Arbus, Antony Gormley, Jenny Holzer, Rachel Whiteread and Christopher Wool.

Those additions give the museum opportunities to build new narratives around conceptual art, photography, installation, public language, performance and the development of postwar artistic practices on both sides of the Atlantic. Because the gift includes objects as well as documentary and time-based material, curators will be able to present modern art as more than a progression of paintings and sculptures.

The Silvermans were particularly important collectors of Fluxus, the international network of artists associated with experimental performances, publications, sound works, multiples and everyday objects. Fluxus participants often rejected conventional distinctions between art and life while challenging the commercial structures of galleries and museums.

The new donation includes material from the couple’s Fluxus holdings and builds on an earlier gift of approximately 130 works made to the DIA through the Gilbert B. and Lila Silverman Fluxus Foundation in 2008. Their collecting activity helped preserve works and documentation that might otherwise have remained dispersed or been lost because many Fluxus projects were temporary, inexpensive or designed for participation rather than traditional display.

The Silvermans also had longstanding personal ties to the Detroit museum. Gilbert Silverman served on DIA boards and committees, while Lila Silverman held leadership roles in museum support organizations. According to accounts of the family’s relationship with the institution, Gilbert Silverman visited the DIA as a child and watched Mexican muralist Diego Rivera work on the monumental “Detroit Industry” fresco cycle in the early 1930s.

That history gives the donation a distinctly local dimension. Although the collection includes internationally prominent figures and works acquired through a global art market, it was assembled by collectors closely connected to metropolitan Detroit and will remain available to the region through a public institution.

The gift also arrives as museums nationwide face rising acquisition costs and competition for major private collections. Large estate donations can change an institution’s strengths more rapidly than years of individual purchases, but they also create practical responsibilities. The DIA will need to complete cataloging, provenance research, conservation assessments, photography, storage planning and decisions about which works can safely be placed on view.

Time-based media and performance documentation present additional challenges because their preservation may depend on older playback equipment, digital migration, installation instructions or agreements governing how a work can be reconstructed. Textiles, photographs, works on paper and unconventional materials also require different environmental and conservation conditions.

The museum has not disclosed an appraised value for the donation. In institutional terms, however, its importance is not limited to market price. The breadth of the gift can fill gaps in the collection, connect established holdings with previously absent artists and allow the DIA to organize exhibitions from its own resources rather than depending entirely on costly loans.

The inclusion of artists such as Arbus, Holzer and Whiteread for the first time is particularly notable. Their work can support broader presentations of photography, feminist art, language-based practices, public sculpture and changing approaches to identity and memory. Other works can place established DIA holdings in a more expansive postwar context.

One object already documented by the museum, Arman’s 1964 mixed-media sculpture “Collection,” consists of newspaper, found objects and discarded material enclosed in a Plexiglas box. Another Silverman gift, a cast-iron jardinière designed around 1900 by French Art Nouveau architect Hector Guimard, demonstrates that the collectors’ interests extended beyond late-20th-century conceptual art into decorative and industrial design.

The November gallery reopening will provide the first indication of how the DIA intends to integrate the donation into its public presentation. The initial installation is unlikely to represent the full range of more than 2,000 works, making the gift a long-term curatorial resource rather than a single exhibition.

For visitors, the most immediate result will be access to works that spent much of their history in private hands. For the museum, the Silverman estate gift provides material capable of supporting decades of rotating installations, focused exhibitions, conservation projects and academic study. Its scale ensures that the donation will influence not only the reopened galleries but also the DIA’s evolving account of modern and contemporary art.