Ivin Ballen installation view, November 2016 (all images courtesy Susanne Hilberry Gallery unless stated otherwise)
On December 23, 2016, the Susanne Hilberry Gallery in Ferndale, Michigan, just outside of Detroit, closed the doors on its final exhibit, a suite of collage-paintings by Ivin Ballen. The gallery’s closure comes forty years after it opened, in December of 1976 in the Detroit suburb of Birmingham. Its absence will be felt not only in Michigan, but in modern and contemporary circles throughout the art world, so far-reaching was its presence.
One of the Midwest’s pioneering contemporary art galleries, it was a reflection of its founder, Susanne Hilberry, in both her commitment to bringing together local and international talent and her visionary eye. From the beginning, Hilberry, who received her master’s degree in architectural history from Yale and later worked as an assistant for Sam Wagstaff at the Detroit Institute of Arts, focused on exposing young and emerging artists in and outside of Detroit. In a 2010 interview, she stated that “an enormous amount of really interesting work was being kept out of Detroit. I wanted to show work I really believed in, work that might have been shown in New York, but wasn’t being shown here.”
Susanne and Hazel installing the gallery’s 2008 Judy Linn exhibition (photo by Judy Linn, courtesy the artist and Susanne Hilberry Gallery)
The Susanne Hilberry Gallery was a gateway to the art world that lay beyond Detroit as well as a kind of training ground where artists, art students, and art critics could learn to view and interact with artworks critically.
In 2002, Hilberry moved the gallery from her basement space in Birmingham to an airy, minimalist space on a quiet street just north of the Detroit city limit of 8 Mile Road.
Susanne and Maisie, Richard Artschwager, Objects in Multiple, 1991.
For four years, I worked at a newspaper a few blocks away from the space. I was twenty-three when I started, just out of art school in Detroit and finding my voice as an art critic. At the time, stepping into the gallery felt like stepping through a portal into New York or London. It was illuminating and freeing, and, mentally, miles away from the suburbs where I grew up.
It was during these visits that I first encountered the photography of Claude Cahun and Francesca Woodman. I discussed creativity with Carrie Mae Weems. I spent hours examining works by Lynda Benglis and Elizabeth Murray.
Yet, it does the gallery a disservice to ascribe its importance in Detroit solely to its cosmopolitanism. Time and again, the gallery showed that Detroit did, and does, have its own art presence, showcasing artists from the 1970s Cass Corridor group (particularly Gordon Newton, who was a favorite of Wagstaff during his tenure at the DIA), as well as younger artists, such as Scott Hocking, Clinton Snider, and Michael E. Smith.
Michael E. Smith installation view, 2014
Hilberry was not the only gallerist in Detroit to showcase local artists, but she did so with tremendous breadth and longevity. And, it was their merit as artists, not their location, which secured their spots in the gallery.
Hilberry’s commitment to bringing contemporary art to Detroit extended beyond her gallery. She was instrumental in developing the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD), which opened in 2006. Even as the museum’s repute grew, however, her gallery remained the place in the Detroit area to see art that really felt new and provoked the imagination.
Anne-Lise Coste “mere, mere, mere, you + you + you, tell me tell me tell me,” April 2009.
In 2003, Hazel Blake joined the Susanne Hilberry Gallery. Following Hilberry’s death in 2015 at age 72, Blake took over as director and has held to Hilberry’s principles of exhibiting complex and challenging art and offering emerging and established artists a shared space. An exhibition in late 2015 honoring Hilberry’s memory exemplified these principles, with works by artists ranging from Cass Corridor figures Newton, Nancy Mitchnick and Ellen Phelan to international figures such as Yayoi Kusama and Detroit-born Mike Kelley.
As I write this, I feel regret for the shows I missed after I moved across the country to California, the opportunities I missed to get inside of artworks because I was too young and inexperienced a writer, the exhibits that will never be and the artists and art-lovers who will never experience this gallery. Mostly, though, I’m thankful for what I gained in those visits. I learned to write about art because I was exposed to art that drew me in, aesthetically and intellectually, and compelled me to dig deeper. I, and many others, learned to look at art because of what Susanne showed us.
39 Years, installation view, December 2015
I will miss it. I’ll miss the building, with its verdant backyard and familial atmosphere; the excitement of each new exhibition; and the artists who may not exhibit in Detroit again because this was their regional home. Yet, if there is a good moment for the gallery’s run to end, this is it. Detroit is changing: people are moving to the city, galleries are proliferating. Young artists have a community. The Susanne Hilberry Gallery laid the foundation; it is not an end but a beginning.
The Susanne Hilberry Gallery (700 Livernois, Ferndale, Michigan) will be open by appointment through February.
