After a six-year and $158-million-dollar renovation, the Detroit Institute of Arts will re-open its doors to the general public this Friday, November 23. ADMISSION IS FREE and the museum will be open for 32 consecutive hours of special events, music, and open galleries.

The DIA has been re-thought, re-structured, re-vitalized, and is ready to be revealed.

Metroblogging Detroit got a sneak peak at the new museum and will be posting about it every day up until the Grand Opening on Friday. We’ll help you to get an idea what to expect out of the new DIA. Most importantly, we hope you will join in the discussion about the museum–what it means to the city, the community, and to you.

Feel free to comment and tell us what you like or dislike about the museum. What left you amazed? What left a little something to be desired? In its new form, does DIA stand for the Detroit Institute of Awful or the Detroit Institute of Awesome?

The picture above is an original piece of art made by me, on leather skin, at the museum’s Family Room on the second floor. Examine it closely. You can tell by the Realist mode in which I attempted to capture the Penobscot Building and One Detroit Center, by the Post-Impressionalist perspective with which I captured antelope being hunted by boatsmen, and by the play of color on a dark canvas, that I am a sucky artist.