Detroit is synonymous with Motown, the Great Migration, and the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history, recorded in 2013. That same year, the New York Times and Vogue highlighted the city’s emergence as an arts hub. Less than a decade later, the pandemic brought life to a slowdown, derailing many plans, including the popular but short-lived Detroit Art Week. As of late, there’s been very little chatter on the wire touting Detroit’s art scene—until now.
Last year, the Detroit Institute of Arts earned the top slot in a USA Today Readers’ Choice survey of best American art museums. This May, the DIA will open Tiff Massey’s 7 Mile + Livernois, the most ambitious solo show for a Detroit artist in the museum's history. Since 2012, Library Street Collective has hosted dozens of exhibitions with blue-chip and emerging artists alike (think Daniel Arsham, Cassi Namoda, Charles McGee, Marcus Brutus, and Nina Chanel Abney, to name a few). This year, their team will open the Shepherd, a public arts campus in a 110-year-old Romanesque-style church in Detroit’s East Village neighborhood. Below, CULTURED introduces you to five people and places responsible for the tectonic shifts occurring in Motor City’s cultural landscape—and tells you what to look out for in 2024.
Detroit Institute of Arts
As one of only a handful of encyclopedic museums in the United States offering free admission to locals, the DIA, which last year saw 50,000 students walk through its doors, is reimagining its contemporary program with exciting new exhibitions this year. Next month, Regeneration: Black Cinema, 1898-1971 opens, celebrating the history of African American filmmakers and centering Detroit artists. This spring, Detroit native Tiff Massey will debut the museum’s “most ambitious installation to date,” according to the institution. Recent acquisitions of art market darlings and new found household names like Firelei Báez, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, and Mario Moore reinforce the museum's growing commitment to contemporary art.
JJ and Anthony Curis
The husband-and-wife duo conceived Library Street Collective over a decade ago, and since then, it has become a pillar of the local scene. Later this year, the founders will open the new headquarters of LSC’s print-focused and collaboration-driven sister gallery, Louis Buhl & Co. The flagship will feature an in-house production studio outfitted with more space for experimentation. Since 2012, LSC’s projects have drawn national buzz, from star artist Jammie Holmes’ first solo gallery show, Pieces of a Man, to a forthcoming skate park designed by the unlikely but delightful pairing of abstract painter McArthur Binion and celebrity skater Tony Hawk.
Mario Moore
Last year, Detroit native and internationally acclaimed artist Mario Moore co-curated Skilled Labor: Black Realism in Detroit with Laura Mott at the Cranbrook Art Museum, located right outside of Motor City. Focusing on representations of the Black body and featuring 20 Detroit artists who’ve worked locally for the last decade, the exhibition is on view through March 3. For the Yale MFA grad who returned to Detroit in 2020, the city is nearly unrecognizable: “In the last 10 years, Detroit has gentrified drastically. Another monumental change is the support of Black artists by institutions in Detroit. That change has come with the global movement of acknowledging the brilliance of Black artists.” Moore has a solo exhibition opening Jan. 20 at the Flint Institute of Arts, an hour's drive from Detroit.
The Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History
Before the inauguration of DC’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in 2016, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History stood as the most prominent cultural institution honoring African American culture in the United States. Last year, the museum received nearly $2 million in federal funding for major renovations including the redesign of the General Motors Theater, which will feature state-of-the-art technology and expanded capacity for performances. This spring, the museum will open Double ID, an exhibition of depictions of Black men in contemporary art pulled from the collection of actor and avid art collector CCH Pounder.
McArthur Binion
The renowned Detroit-raised artist opened his first hometown show in nearly 20 years at the Library Street Collective last winter with “Self:Portraits.” In 2019, he launched Modern Ancient Brown, a foundation committed to supporting the work of Black and Indigenous artists in Detroit. This year, MAB is set to open its post-baccalaureate artist residency program to artists within the Great Lakes region, from Detroit to Chicago. LSC’s soon-to-open Shepherd space will house the foundation’s headquarters. Binion told CULTURED he’s excited about “the possibility of the advancement of young painters in Detroit.”
