(Visual Art, Detroit) What do you do when the industry around which you’ve built your entire city crumbles? Well, first you start rebuilding the industry. Then you bring in some new industries. ...more...
Art News
The Toledo Museum of Art Wants Your Children
June 5, 2012
(Visual Art, Toledo) To look at the art! It wants them to look at the art! That’s all! Don’t flip out, this is actually really great. ...more...
Buy a Deck, Give the Kids of Detroit a Skatepark
May 25, 2012
(Visual Art, Detroit) Lost, sometimes, in the endless macabre tales of woe-is-Detroit end-times apocalypse, is this: There’s still three-quarters of a million people living in Detroit, and more than four million in the D’s metro area. That’s not an empty city. ...more...
The Mike Kelley ‘Mobile Homestead’ Will Happen
May 14, 2012
(Visual Art, Detroit) Mike Kelley took his own life, apparently, in January of this year, and regardless of the finality of that act for Kelley personally, it also threw into flux Kelley’s planned Mobile Homestead, a project planned in conjunction with the Detroit Museum of Contemporary Art that sought to replicate Kelley’s childhood home in as precise a fashion as possible – exact dimensions, exact furnishings, that sort of thing. ...more...
This Weekend, The DSO Might Play ‘Bawitdaba’
May 10, 2012
(Classical Music, Detroit) Have it in your heads now, too! DE BANG DE DANG DIGGY DIGGY something something UP JUMP THE BOOGIE. ...more...
Leonard Slatkin’s Brother Will Guest with the DSO This Weekend
May 3, 2012
(Classical Music, Detroit) Ah, the threads that tie generations together. This is so neat and compact, it’s like a Russian nesting doll. Follow: Leonard Slatkin is the conductor and musical director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra; his brother, Frederick Zlotkin, is an eminent cellist; their mother, Eleanor Aller, was also a preeminent cellist and founded the Hollywood String Quartet with their father, Felix Slatkin, who was Sinatra’s concertmaster in the ’50s and did all manner of other notable musical things which you can feel free to Wiki. ...more...
Student Work This Month at Detroit Institute of Arts
May 2, 2012
(Visual Art, Detroit) Arts funding is being slashed everywhere, echoing and fueling the emergent narrative that America has somehow become too dependent on things which are viewed as fun, like learning to paint, as opposed to things that are deemed less fun, like, I don’t know, learning how to build bridges or make chemicals, which are things that are not fun at all, uh-uh, no way. ...more...
DSO Will Have a New Concertmaster Soon, Maybe
April 30, 2012
(Classical Music, Detroit) Every incremental step away from the precipice of disaster is in itself a victory, but when things get as dark as they did for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra last year, the road to recovery is ill-mapped and shady and covered in obstacles; even for that, things are much better now than they were last year, which gives you a decent example of what the DSO has been through in the last year. ...more...
Detroit Gets American Premiere of Barcelona Ballet’s ‘Swan Lake’
April 24, 2012
(Dance, Detroit) The ballet company’s tour continues Friday at the Detroit Opera House. ...more...
Cranbrook Academy of Art Exposes Its Grad Students
April 19, 2012
(Visual Art, Detroit) Cranbrook is throwing open its grad students’ studios this Sunday, beginning at 2. ...more...
Michigan Opera Theatre Goes Back to the ‘Pearl Fishers’
April 12, 2012
(Opera, Detroit) Bizet’s 1863 opera kicks off the MOT’s spring season at 7:30 Saturday evening. ...more...
White and Panter Bring ‘Light’ to MOCA Detroit
April 9, 2012
(Art Museums, Detroit) Lighting wizard Joshua White and set design master Gary Panter have combined on a light show, now up at MOCA Detroit through the end of the month. ...more...
Detroit Symphony Announces 2012-13 Jazz Programming
March 20, 2012
(Jazz, Classical Music, Detroit) The DSO’s 2012-13 Paradise Jazz series is remarkably strong, with Cassandra Wilson and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band among the headliners. ...more...
DSO Readies “Classical Roots” For This Weekend
March 15, 2012
(Classical Music, Detroit) The concerts on Saturday and Sunday will emphasize African-American spirituals; also, there’s a piece about then-Senator Barack Obama dancing on the “Ellen” show. ...more...
Fluxus Takes Root at University of Michigan Museum of Art
March 15, 2012
(Art Museums, Detroit) “Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life” is up through May 20. ...more...
Street artist sneaks into neighborhoods, leaves a bit of whimsy
March 14, 2012
(Art, Detroit) Like any neighborhood, the Woodbridge area west of Wayne State has its share of “No Parking” and “Neighborhood Watch” signs. But unlike most Detroit neighborhoods, ...more...
Detroit Initiative Puts Art in Vacant Storefronts
March 12, 2012
(Arts, Detroit) The Woodward Windows project is filling shopfronts along a derelict slice of Woodward Avenue with art and color. ...more...
The DIA’s Many Facebook Fans: Will They Show Up in Person?
March 1, 2012
(Art Museums, Detroit) The Detroit Institute of Arts sent me a press release today that, at first, made me chuckle. It wasn’t about art at all — it was about the number of people who “like” the DIA on Facebook ...more...
Fashion Might Just Save Some Lives in Detroit
March 1, 2012
(Arts, Detroit) College for Creative Studies professor Stephen Schock has this new thing going, “Design Activism”, which he intends to benefit Detroit’s sadly growing homeless population. ...more...
Detroit Institute of Arts “Inside/Out” Program Will Continue Through 2013
February 23, 2012
(Arts, Detroit) The public arts program places high-quality reproductions of works from DIA’s collection around the city. ...more...
PBS Spotlights Cab Calloway on Sunday
February 23, 2012
(Jazz, National) Anyone not feeling the Oscar hype would do well to keep “Cab Calloway: Sketches” in mind for potential Sunday night viewing. (8 ET; check local listings.) ...more...
Ai Weiwei Doc Set for Summer Release
February 22, 2012
(Film, Arts, National) Be on the lookout for “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry”, which will hit theaters sometime this summer via Sundance Selects. ...more...
These Paintings Can’t Be Real, Can They?
February 22, 2012
(Arts, National) Herewith the tale of Glafira Rosales, who showed up at an art dealer on the Upper East Side with a Rothko in 1995 and set off a firestorm. ...more...
Are the Arts in Decline? Depends on How You Look at It.
February 21, 2012
(Arts, National) Jed Perl of “The New Republic” takes a shot at recasting the conversation. ...more...
Antonio Banderas Will Play Pablo Picasso
February 21, 2012
(Film, Arts, National) The Desperado star will play Picasso circa 1937 in “33 Days”; the film is scheduled to shoot this summer. ...more...
