Above: A sneak peek at Brightmoor Maker Space. All photos courtesy of Stamps School of Art & Design. An earlier version of this post incorrectly said that Bart Eddy is superintendent of Detroit Community Schools. He is a co-founder. Sharon McPhail is the superintendent. Back in 2014, the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & […]
Article · January 15, 2016 by Rosie Sharp
Above: Installation view of “The Cranbrook Salon.” Photos by Rosie Sharp. Women throughout history have gathered for the purposes of discussion, education and communication on subjects that range from the intellectual to the highly personal. Cranbrook Art Museum Curator Laura Mott and Assistant Curator Shelley Selim decided to emphasize this tradition as they assembled “The […]
Article · January 7, 2016 by Rosie Sharp
“Let Me Die” by Joseph Keckler. Photo by Rosie Sharp. On Saturday, Dec. 12, performance artist Joseph Keckler staged a four-hour presentation of a work-in-progress, “Let Me Die,” at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. “Let Me Die” is a performance piece incorporating the death scenes from dozens of operas in the public domain (all performed […]
Article · December 16, 2015 by Rosie Sharp
Photo: “Brenda Goodman: Selected Work 1961-2015” at Center Galleries. Photos by Rosie Sharp. Painter Brenda Goodman was part of Detroit’s Cass Corridor art movement, which arose in the counterculture context of the 1960s and 1970s and found an audience and group of avid contributors on local campuses. One of those campuses was the College for […]
Article · December 10, 2015 by Rosie Sharp
Photo: Young aspiring dancers practicing their moves before Detroit’s dance-off with Zimbabwe. Photos by Rosie Sharp. Detroit’s 43rd annual Noel Night enjoyed some added international flavor this past weekend thanks to a long-form dance party and DJ battle at the N’Namdi Center for Contemporary Art, a two-time Knight Arts Challenge winner. Facilitated in collaboration with […]
Article · December 8, 2015 by Rosie Sharp
Photo: Garrett MacLean in discussion with attendees at his artist talk. Photos by Rosie Sharp. At Popps Packing, a Knight Foundation grantee in Hamtramck, Mich., the November exhibition focused on the work of photographer Garrett MacLean. “Make Way for Progress (A Story of Displacement)” presented people MacLean met over the course of two visits to Nicaragua. His […]
Article · December 4, 2015 by Rosie Sharp
Photo (L-R): ADULT., a teacher and students from Detroit Achievement Academy, Marsha Music, Tonya Maria Matthews, and students from YouthVille Detroit. What does Detroit sound like? This seemingly basic question yielded complicated answers, as composer and MIT Professor of Music and Media Tod Machover discovered once he began work on “Symphony in D”—a collaboration between himself, […]
Article · November 25, 2015 by Rosie Sharp
Photo: The crew contemplates rejoining the two ends of the limousine. While the Detroit Lions unexpectedly triumphed over the Green Bay Packers on Sunday, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (a Knight grantee) hosted an art world take on the tailgate party in its parking lot: a carefully choreographed bisection of a town car. The […]
Article · November 20, 2015 by Rosie Sharp
Photo: The crowd at Public Pool on the opening night for “Normal Nudity.” Artist Olayami Dabls is best known for the African Bead Museum and its surrounding sprawling sculptural installation, for which he received a $100,000 Knight Arts Challenge grant. Relatively unknown were a series of figurative watercolors, all depicting nude figures, that he began […]
Article · November 18, 2015 by Rosie Sharp
George Clinton was the headliner, drawing a capacity crowd to the 1,100-seat Detroit Film Theatre auditorium. The Secret Society of Twisted Storytellers is an organization that seeks to promote connectivity, understanding and humanity through the sharing of honest personal stories–a mission that is supported in part by a $30,000 Knight Arts Challenge grant. The society […]
Article · November 12, 2015 by Rosie Sharp
Photo: A celebration of nations inside the Charles H. Wright’s central atrium. The Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, which has received more than $1.5 million in Knight Foundation funding over the years, opened a new exhibit over Halloween weekend: “Collect: The Power of Knowing,” curated by Dr. Cledie Collins Taylor. The exhibit showcases an […]
Article · November 4, 2015 by Rosie Sharp