Detroit's culture doesn't sit still: a kunsthalle in an old car dealership, a 1903 tile works still firing glazes, a market district wrapped in murals, and a 1919 concert hall built in 23 days. Three days inside the working art scene.
A 22,000 sq ft former auto dealership on Woodward, converted into a non-collecting kunsthalle in 2006. Rotating shows fill the raw concrete hall, and Mike Kelley's Mobile Homestead, a replica of the artist's childhood house, sits out back.
George N'Namdi's 16,000 sq ft Sugar Hill gallery has anchored the city's Black contemporary art scene since 2010, showing abstraction by Charles McGee, Al Loving and Nick Cave alongside a courtyard sculpture yard.
Mary Chase Perry Stratton's 1903 tile works still fires its iridescent glazes inside a 1907 Tudor Revival building on East Jefferson. The upstairs museum shows historic tile; through the workshop glass you watch pressers and glazers at work.
A former service alley between Broadway and Library Street, resurfaced by Library Street Collective as an open-air gallery. Work by Shepard Fairey, How & Nosm and Nina Chanel Abney runs up the Z garage walls and along both alley faces.
The world's largest institution devoted to African American history, opened on this site in 1997 beneath a 100-foot glass dome. 'And Still We Rise' runs 22,000 sq ft from Africa through the Middle Passage to Detroit's Great Migration.
Admission-free since 2013. The basement's Streets of Old Detroit recreates cobbled shopfronts from the 1840s to 1900s, while the Allesee Gallery of Culture traces the city's sound, sport and style decade by decade.
Built as the Capitol Theatre in 1922 by C. Howard Crane, shuttered, then restored in 1996 for Detroit Opera. The gilded Italian Renaissance auditorium seats about 2,700 and backstage tours cross one of North America's largest stages.
Orchestra Hall was built in 1919 in four months and 23 days for conductor Ossip Gabrilowitsch and is still ranked among the finest-sounding rooms anywhere. The DSO plays Thursday to Sunday through the season.
Six sheds dating from 1891 anchor the largest historic public market district in the country. Since 2015 the Murals in the Market festival has added more than 150 walls by artists from 20 countries across the surrounding blocks.
A working letterpress shop in Eastern Market with Vandercook proof presses and cabinets of wood type rescued from old Detroit print houses. The shop sells broadsides by local writers and runs drop-in printing evenings.
Tyree Guyton started nailing salvaged clocks, shoes and dolls to derelict McDougall-Hunt houses in 1986, surviving two city demolitions and a run of arsons. What stands on Heidelberg Street is now being rebuilt as an arts village.
A 1935 Art Deco supper club of curved mahogany, brass rails and low amber light, dark from 1985 until a 2006 restoration brought it back. Detroit jazz players hold the small stage most nights and the kitchen runs late.