Travel down Detroit’s main streets and the city’s architectural diversity is plain to see: towering Art Deco buildings, ornate neo-Gothic detailing, and innovative modernist design anchor a thriving Midwestern arts scene. At this year’s Detroit Month of Design, the city’s foremost creative voices reinforced its growing status as an American destination for craft with a series of talks, presentations, and workshops. Arts writer and CULTURED contributor Evan Nicole Brown hosted two of the calendar’s notable conversations, the City of Design Talk and the Black Culture Across Borders panel, exploring how the city’s arts and architecture scene is evolving in real time.
The Scene: Dusk light came through Michigan Central Station’s grand windows, which served as an apt setting for the City of Design Talk. After the panel ended, Detroit DJ EDNA amped up the crowd with an electric performance. Over in the city’s historic district, at the gallery and arts center Scarab Club, the conversations continued at the Black Culture Across Borders panel.
The Crowd: At City of Design, Brown hosted a lively conversation with artist Salam Rida and architects Jaimelyn Neher and Anthony Morin that explored the intersection of design, visual arts, and performance. Later in the month, Brown’s Black Culture Across Borders panel brought together leading architects, patrons, and founders, including curator and journalist Stefan Novakovic, collector Kenneth Montague, architect Tura Cousins Wilson, entrepreneur Dion Walcott, and Detroit Month of Design Director Kiana Wenzell to compare notes on the ever-evolving creative culture of Detroit’s Black communities.
Memorable Moments: The month-long celebrations, in partnership with Design Core Detroit, unfolded across the city. There were a range of installations, including the multi-artist show “Mothercraft: Microchimeric Bodies,” inspired by cell transference across bodies; museum exhibitions, including one focused on Georgia O’Keeffe‘s lesser-known paintings of architecture; and panel discussions on topics such as adaptive reuse and textile innovation.
Cause for FOMO: The month may be over, but the city’s design scene doesn’t stop. Detroit’s buildings, galleries, and studios are open year-round, so you don’t have to wait for next September to enjoy all they have to offer. It won’t take long to understand why loyalists keep planning their return.
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