Hope for Detroit Art Just Down the Road from D.I.A.

The Detroit Institute of Arts is dying. Five years ago this observation would have seemed obvious and inevitable, a reflection of the city of Detroit itself. But it might come as a shock to many just 15 months after a 160 million dollar renovation project was completed at the venerable museum.

Under the leadership of director Graham W.J. Beal, the ambitious project (with an ambitious budget) sought to re-establish the D.I.A. as a cultural center for the city of Detroit and to create lasting relationships with the people of urban Detroit, not just the suburbanites who were the museum’s main patrons. While the re-opening attracted an initial excitement and a rush of visitors in the short-run, the surface changes at the D.I.A. appear to be wearing off as the old institutional bones reveal the museum as the same symbol of urban decay, racial inequality, and social ignorance.

The announcement late last month that it would lay off 1/5 of its employees (56 full- and 7 part-time), was just one in a series of such announcements recently. The museum has also canceled three upcoming exhibits that were to travel to Detroit from other venues. Instead of European Baroque masterworks, D.I.A. visitors will have to settle for a reshuffling of objects from the permanent collection. Not only will there be nothing new to see there will also be less to see and less time to see it. Along with staff reductions the D.I.A. will shorten its hours and close several of the newly added or renovated galleries. Keeping exhibits longer in the galleries that do stay open will also reduce costs.

The increase in visitors the museum saw after its November 2007 re-opening has declined sharply in recent months as the D.I.A. struggles to cover the remaining cost of the now complete renovations. The museum has currently raised only about 125 million of the full 180 million dollars the project cost. With continual cuts to the museum’s endowment and with nearly no support coming from the state of Michigan or the city of Detroit, the D.I.A. is forced to reduce its annual operating budget--which these cutbacks will do by about 6 million dollars.

Lay offs will occur in each of the museum’s departments with careful consideration to preserve the way visitors perceive and interact with the museum’s operation. Director Beal, on the subject said, “Our challenge is to maintain the incredible momentum from our grand opening and to meet the public’s expectation for an outstanding art museum experience.” Despite this budget tightening, the D.I.A. will need more than fiscal responsibility to save its face-lift from sagging back to an old countenance.

The highly celebrated changes to the look and feel of the D.IA. are beginning to reveal less of a permanent structural alteration and more of a simple surface shining. Re-envisioning the art historical approach to the display and presentation of art objects, the new D.I.A. was intended to truly be the democratizing institution that it once had been for the proletariat of an industrial and thriving Detroit. The new layout of galleries and the objects contained within them was meant to contextualize the artworks to make their meaning more accessible to more people.

The re-envisioning of one gallery was intended to connect black visitors to the presence of black American artists’ work in the D.I.A. collection. While meant to celebrate the artists and better facilitate the interaction between black visitors and black artists, the gallery is, by the physical fact of its walls, segregated. It is, in effect, a reflection of the world outside the D.I.A.: black artists huddled together, with Western (white) artists filling the surrounding galleries. If the D.I.A. wanted to celebrate and not segregate the black artists’ works it exhibits, it perhaps would have been better realized had the museum placed the artists alongside their contemporaries, weaving them into a historical narrative where they belong; uniting, not dividing.

In other ways the renovations have also fallen short in democratizing the museum. The new Farnsworth Street entrance (which like the interior alterations is the design of architect Michael Graves) is not, unlike the main Woodward Street entrance, a reflection of classical architectural models, meant to invoke the temple-like quality of the museum. For the sake of democratization of the museum and making everyone feel welcome to enter, the ambition of this design is commendable.

The execution of the design is, however, abominable and welcoming to no one. The cold, grey stone slabs that cover the facade are unfortunately complemented concrete and a high and single row of windows so narrow they are virtually invisible. All in all, the entrance works very well, for the Wayne County Jail. Arriving at the Farnsworth entrance, one has no idea that this is an art museum and certainly does not believe that any artistic treasures await inside. This architectural blunder serves as a visual reminder that what is inside the museum belongs to one world, and what is outside, to another.

With the “new” D.I.A. not living up to its grand expectations as a cultural center for the people who live closest to it, where then do the people of Detroit look for socially relevant and accessible art? Well, they don’t have to look far. Only four blocks down Woodward Avenue stands a small, but potentially huge beacon of new life and cultural vitality for urban Detroit. The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (better known as MOCAD) has, in the two years since its opening, lived up to its promise to “fuel crucial dialogue, collaboration, public engagement, and be responsive to the cultural content of our time.”

The museum is housed in the building of a former car dealership-- a clear symbol of urban decay and renewal. It is apparent even from the outside that the museum engages with its environment, the word “amaze” written in graffiti letters across the building side facing Woodward, stretch from the ground to the top of the one-story structure. Words are a big part of the work MOCAD features. One of the museum’s first exhibits, Words Fail Me, included an exterior light installation by the artist Martin Creed, whose prophetic statement read “Everything Is Going to Be Alright,” across the same outside wall.

It is this kind of interaction with community that distinguishes MOCAD from its big brother down the street. As a non-collecting institution, MOCAD’s temporary exhibits always offer something new, and something pertinent to show and to be seen. But it is not just looking that the museum facilitates and wants. MOCAD provides a regular schedule of concerts, discussions, readings, film showings, and performances that are meant to bring people in and send them back out into the community with a new awareness. It is also the goal of these events to create and build a social network of informed and motivated individuals who can work together for social progress and betterment.

Just this month, MOCAD has on its schedule a film showing and discussion about a 1968 Dodge auto plant strike; a Sunday Family Day centered on the current Black Is, Black Ain’t exhibit; a panel discussion on the use of black images and black words in the media; a reading by two poets, Barry Schwabsky and Tyrone Williams; and a concert featuring young up-and-coming Detroit musicians. The nature of all these programs encourages social dialogue and the discussion relevant race, class, and generational issues. Perhaps what is most significant about these programs is there variety; MOCAD facilitates interaction and dialogue but allows the community to guide their direction.

Where the D.I.A. has spent millions of dollars it doesn’t have to remodel itself as a reflection of the city in which it stands, in large part, it is still a reminder of division and decay. The museum has rearranged the furniture when it needed to change the institutional framework. The pulse of the Detroit Institute of Arts may be fading but just down the road a little but young and gutsy museum beats in the heart of the city.