The street artist Shepard Fairey may get a lot of laughs when he visits Portland, but if he sets foot in Detroit anytime soon things will get very serious.
Detroit
Posted inArt
Envisioning Detroit as a Postindustrial Boomtown
DETROIT — Detroit Boom City is an ambitious installation orchestrated by Atlanta’s Dashboard Co-Op by invitation of the Ford Motor Company Fund, featuring some of Detroit’s most innovative artists.
Posted inArt
Building Monuments Amid Detroit’s Modern Day Ruins
DETROIT — It is easy, when considering the staggering legacy of human history, to think about it as a series of things that took place in the past.
Posted inArt
“Abortion,” “Miscarriage,” or “Untitled”? A Frida Kahlo Lithograph’s Complicated History
DETROIT — Art may be open to interpretation, but when the work in question is a reflection of an artist’s life, historians and museums tend to present their interpretations as fact.
Posted inArt
Art X Detroit Lives Up to the City’s Vibrant Cultural Life
DETROIT — Trying to notice the impact of the Kresge Foundation on the arts in Detroit is like a fish trying to notice water.
Posted inPerformance
One City, Two Experimental Plays, a Whole Lot of Creative Women
Last week was an outstanding one for experimental theater in Detroit.
Posted inArt
The Stories of Minors Sentenced to Life in Prison
DETROIT — The US is the only country in the world that sentences children to life without parole, also known as “natural life,” for crimes they committed before they could quit school, drive, or vote.
Posted inOpinion
Will Galapagos’s Move to Detroit Be a Blessing or a Curse?
I grew up in the Metro Detroit area as a dancer and performer who, inevitably it seems, ended up in Brooklyn a few days after graduating college. Is it time to turn around?
Posted inNews
Historic Home Dumps $100 Million Cézanne
The Edsel and Eleanor Ford House in Grosse Pointe Shores, Michigan, a wealthy suburb north of Detroit, sold a Paul Cézanne painting for $100 million last year, the historic home’s 2013 tax forms recently revealed.
Posted inNews
Judge Approves Historic Detroit Bankruptcy Plan, Protecting Its Museum
Judge Steven Rhodes approved Detroit’s bankruptcy plan today, allowing the city to move out of insolvency in the coming weeks and slowly towards financial independence. Rhodes called the plan “fair and feasible,” the Detroit Free Press reports, “providing the legal authority for the city to slash more than $7 billion in unsecured liabilities and reinvest $1.4 billion over 10 years in public services and blight removal.”
Posted inNews
Graffiti Crackdown Snares Sanctioned Street Art
The city of Detroit launched a secret new graffiti crackdown in the most antagonizing manner imaginable last week: by issuing thousands of dollars in fines to owners of businesses who had commissioned or given permission to artists to create murals on their buildings.
Posted inArt
A Very Personal Art History of the Motor City
With ruin porn photographs and discussions of whether creativity can save Detroit persisting at every turn, it was only a matter of time before someone organized an art exhibition about the city. That time has come.
