The Detroit Institute of Arts recently expanded its free admission to include the surrounding counties of Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties, following a vote yesterday that levies a property tax in those counties to support the museum. Attendance then tripled, over last year’s figure for the day. Read More
The ninth annual Shanghai Biennale, which runs Oct. 2, 2012 to March 31, 2013, features city’s rather than the usual country pavilions. As part of the biennale, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit has been selected to curate the Detroit pavilion. Read More
We just received our copy of Detroit: 138 Square Miles, a book of photographs by Julia Reyes Taubman, one of the founders of the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, the book’s publisher. It is beautiful and overwhelming. An introduction by novelist and Detroiter Elmore Leonard is as fine an explanation as any:
Read More“She focuses on scenes that offer little or no hope, buildings that appear war=damaged, bombed out, but with a positive feeling of history about them. We view the Michigan Central station, its architecture striking but gone to hell and we wonder if it can be restored. Or is it too late?
“There are aerials of empty blocks in the middle of the city gone to overgrown fields; the cemetery still there, no one going anywhere.”
In the Detroit Free Press, Mark Stryker has a great review of “Detroit Revealed: Photographs 2000-2010,” an exhibition of images of the city at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Even before Mr. Stryker mentions the exhibition, he succinctly takes down the entire concept of “ruin porn,” that problematic presentation of urban decay as both fetish and all-encompassing (something we’ve also discussed here): Read More
