To drive through Detroit is to move through a landscape shaped by both its storied industrial legacy and its long-standing creative community, where generations of artists have turned the city’s factories, urban prairies and waterfront into a living canvas.
The third installment of the WBEZ and Chicago Sun-Times visual art road trip heads east to Detroit and its smaller neighboring cities, where the materials of the past — steel, brick, salvaged wood — aren’t just inspiration but building blocks in a vibrant cultural landscape.
DEARBORN: Arab American heritage and next-level cashews
Before delving into Detroit, first stop in Dearborn, a suburb that offers a cultural experience rooted in industrial history and Arab American heritage.
The Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation houses iconic objects from American life. “It’s just huge, like the size of an airplane hangar,” said Shelley Selim, the Mort Harris Curator of Automotive, Industrial and Decorative Design at the Detroit Institute of Arts. “There’s a Buckminster Fuller Dymaxion House there, and the Eames ‘Mathematica’ exhibition that they designed for a World’s Fair for IBM.” Next door, Greenfield Village recreates streetscapes from centuries past, with historic homes, steam engines and a glassblowing studio where visitors can watch artists at work.
Arab American communities have been rooted in east Dearborn for more than a century. Many families arrived in the early 20th century to work for Ford and other automakers. In 2023, it became the country’s first city with an Arab American majority.
AlTayeb remains a favorite for Lebanese breakfast platters. The fatteh stands out — layers of toasted pita, chickpeas, warm yogurt, pine nuts and olive oil. Portions are generous; flavors are bold, earthy and bright. For a hearty lunch, try the combo platter at James Beard Award-winning Al Ameer, which includes a generous spread of chicken tawook, lamb kofta, shish kebab, falafel and perfectly fluffed rice.
Before leaving town, Hashem’s Nuts & Coffee Gallery offers a fragrant stop. Shelves are packed with Middle Eastern spices, roasted coffees and hard-to-find blends like ras el hanout. Selim makes regular trips to the shop where she stocks up on jumbo Brazilian cashews.
DETROIT: A city of space, memory and imagination
The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) houses one of the country’s most significant public collections. At its center is the Diego Rivera Court, named after the renowned Mexican painter and muralist who vividly portrayed social inequity, labor struggles and industrialization. “It rewards you every time you look at it,” said Selim. “There’s even a cheat sheet in the tile floor — little carved labels tell you what each panel depicts.” Rivera’s 1932 fresco of the Ford Rouge Plant stretches across four walls and grapples with the tensions between machines, myth, labor and land.
Nearby, “Quilting Time,” a large mosaic by Romare Bearden, pays tribute to communal labor and visual abstraction. “It is just a really stunning representation of community, of women coming together,” Selim said. “And the abstraction of the quilts is just spectacular.”
East of the museum, the Shepherd — a decommissioned Catholic church — has been converted into a contemporary art space by Library Street Collective, a Detroit-based organization known for turning historic buildings into community cultural hubs.
The current Shepherd show, “The Sea and the Sky, and You and I,” centers artists whose work “reflects on histories of landscape.” Among the works are three sculptures by Detroit artist Scott Hocking, who built the pieces from salvaged materials collected at a nearby marina. The artist “considers the cultural memory of the city and the material memory of the city,” said Allison Glenn, a Detroit native who curated the show.
The show, which runs through Aug. 30, also includes work by Midwest sculptor and activist Jordan Weber, whose installation features a spliced GTO Judge — a muscle car originally built by Black assembly line workers — emerging from the floor like a buried relic. The sculpture echoes Weber’s ongoing collaboration with Canfield Consortium, a nonprofit in the East Canfield neighborhood, which has long grappled with industrial pollution from nearby auto factories. There, Weber installed an air-quality beacon and plans to plant a conifer forest to absorb airborne pollutants.
Public art like Weber’s builds on a long legacy of community-based arts efforts in Detroit. One of the most recognizable is The Heidelberg Project, started in the 1980s by artist Tyree Guyton, who transformed his family’s former home — and eventually two surrounding blocks left in disrepair after the 1967 uprising — into a colorful, ever-evolving wonderland.
For a different kind of spin through history, Submerge is home to the techno label Underground Resistance. Glenn calls it “the world’s first known techno museum.” The space includes a basement record store and rotating tours led by Detroit music legends like Jon Dixon and Cornelius Harris.
Across town, on the city’s West Side, the Dabls Mbad African Bead Museum spans an entire block. “The founder, Olayami Dabls, really appreciated the symbolic and cultural significance of beads within the African and African diasporic communities,” Selim said. “It’s a really cool artist-created environment.”
John K. King Used & Rare Books, located in a former glove factory just west of downtown, feels suspended in time. “Every sale is handwritten down in a ledger,” said Selim. Pull-cord lights and floor-to-ceiling stacks make the browsing feel both intimate and endless. “You’ll always find something unique and interesting.”
Round out the day at Paramita Sound, a downtown wine bar and listening room that pairs vinyl sets with high communal tables and natural wine. “Even if you don’t want to talk to anyone,” said Glenn, “you’ll be socializing.”
BLOOMFIELD HILLS: Midcentury icons and palatial grounds
Set on more than 300 acres of landscaped grounds and landmark architecture, Cranbrook Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills beckons as a design destination and a place to wander. “People just explore the grounds for landscape architecture and sculpture,” said Laura Mott, chief curator of the museum. “It’s really just one of the gems of America.”
The current show, “Eventually Everything Connects: Mid-Century Modern Design in the U.S.,” is an ambitious exhibition that revisits the midcentury design canon. “We’ve done a lot of work excavating individuals who are diversifying American modern design,” said Mott. That includes a “textile forest” that hangs from the museum ceiling and walls and features works by such designers as Alexander Girard, Ruth Adler Schnee and Olga Lee. The show is on view through Sept. 21.
Cranbrook’s buildings themselves are also part of the draw. The museum was designed by Eliel Saarinen and opened in 1942. Visitors can also tour the Saarinen House, where Eliel and Loja Saarinen lived while the Cranbrook academy was established, or book a visit to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Smith House, one of Michigan’s best-preserved examples of Wright’s Usonian homes.
Bonus: Where to Stay
For those making a weekend of it, ALEO Detroit offers a low-key, art-forward stay in Detroit’s East Village. Warda Bouguettaya, a James Beard Award–winning chef, runs the breakfast program, and the on-site bar Father Forgive Me opens in the afternoon. “The balcony is right above the bar,” said Glenn. “It’s like your backyard, but with better lighting.” And funky, orange wine.
Or try The Siren Hotel, which offers a gilded, atmospheric experience. Set in a former 1920s high-rise, the chic design leans maximalist: velvet upholstery, terrazzo floors and heavy drapery.
Elly Fishman is a journalist and author whose work explores immigration, incarceration and American culture, including the arts. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, GQ, Rolling Stone, WBEZ Chicago, among others. She is currently working on her second book, forthcoming from HarperCollins.
Summer art road trips
