A City That Votes for Its Art

12 minutes ago

3 min read

Made for a purpose

When I waltz the halls of the DIA, I dance through all three floors. Every room holds a bit of history, singing the songs of the artist and of someone, somewhere in time.

When that piece was created, they were not thinking about a museum. They were focused on its purpose, what it should be or convey. That purpose was so breathtaking that now, and forever, people like me come to stand and gaze at it. Pondering the stories it hides behind each thread, curve and painted line. We grasp a glimpse of life in that person's mind. What they created lives on in our memories.

The Hindu statues give me pause every time. Somebody, long ago, carved that much detail by hand. And then there are the rooms of contemporary and Black art, the pieces about Detroit. Like Tiff Massey, who shows the world what it means to be a Black girl through hair.

One piece held me. It was made from scrap metal pulled from around the city, metal from cars. When you build a car, you want it to roll in style forever. Over time that dream fades with breakdowns and longer jump starts. But even broken down, it became a masterpiece. Welding its ideas in the minds of people like me.

What Detroit chose

On November 3, voters said yes twice.

They renewed the Detroit Zoo millage, with about 70% of voters in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties saying yes. And they passed something new: a 10-year tax for the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, the Detroit Historical Museum and the Dossin Great Lakes Museum on Belle Isle. About 60% of voters in Wayne and Oakland counties backed it, and about two thirds in Wayne County alone. It costs a homeowner about $20 a year for every $100,000 of taxable value.

In a year flooded with images a machine can make in seconds, a city building the future chose to keep real history alive.

And still we rise

I have walked through the Charles H. Wright Museum, founded in 1965, and its main exhibit is called And Still We Rise.

The walkthrough starts in Africa, in the 1600s and 1700s. You see how people lived, what they built, what they ate. It was not some uncivilized place. It was a full culture, robust and complicated. Markets selling everything you would need to survive. The exhibits were interactive. You could even hear what it sounded like as people called out for beans and rice or went looking for baskets.

Then you walk into slavery, and you see that it did not happen overnight. It was gradual. Many hands were involved. People who did not have to sell their prisoners of war to outsiders did it anyway, without thinking about what it would do for generations. You see the conditions on the ships. You see them dock in Virginia, and you understand that their lives have changed forever.

Then freedom. Then Detroit. Manufacturing. Black Bottom and Paradise Valley. The Tuskegee Airmen, including Coleman Young, who would become Detroit's first Black mayor. You see how Black Detroiters built the Detroit that stands here now.

If you did not walk through it, you would not see it. You would not see how tragedies can turn into triumphs. History is sometimes treated like a mystery, but when you see it, it can shape the future. Knowing it helps keep history from repeating itself. For we know not ourselves if we forget our past.

What a machine cannot carve

An AI can make a picture of a slave ship in seconds. So why does it matter that people built that walkthrough by hand?

Because of how real it is. When someone carves it, or prints it, or builds it, they put a piece of their emotions into it. Every detail is something that happened to someone in their family, or someone they valued. They see a piece of themselves in it, and they want to share it with us instead of letting it be buried. Instead of letting it be lost.

A machine can copy the picture. It cannot carry the grief behind it.

That is what Detroit voted for. Not buildings. People who refuse to let the story disappear.