DETROIT, A METONYM FOR BOOM AND BUST in American industry across the twentieth century, has a split personality courtesy of the national news media. This poster child for yesterday’s urban blight is being shaped into a fledgling paradise for tomorrow, with space for urban farms, artists’ studios, and other major real-estate opportunities. This cyclical narrative of rebirth is echoed on the city’s seal: Speramus meliora and resurget cineribus, Latin phrases for “we hope for better things” and “it will rise from the ashes.” Art and culture play a starring role in this burgeoning new identity for the metropolis, but astride these persistent narratives are niggling questions regarding economic inequality and sustainability, plus the robust skepticism of many longtime Detroiters.
Restoration of the historic Book Tower by ODA Architecture exemplifies the potential for preservation and regeneration. The building—and the surrounding economic revival—have become synonymous with the name Dan Gilbert, now a billionaire, who a decade ago snapped up two square miles’ worth of skyscrapers in the heart of downtown Detroit, transforming it into the corporate headquarters of his Rocket Mortgage (aka Quicken Loans). The dramatic scope of Gilbert’s investments, according to the New York Times, “amounts to one of the most ambitious” privately funded urban renewal projects in the US. Now a couple well-studied in Gilbert’s success is orchestrating a similar, art-focused revitalization on Detroit’s east side.
The Little Village is a neighborhood Detroiters never knew existed. Its revitalization is being led by Anthony and JJ Curis, a pair of globally savvy social engineers and maverick real-estate investors. Together they cofounded the galleries Library Street Collective (in 2012) and Louis Buhl & Co. (in 2020). Now the lusty repurposing of a deconsecrated Catholic church and its rectory, called the Shepherd, will become the lodestar of the Village. The Curises have helicoptered in big names from the architecture and design worlds who are skilled in adaptive reuse, urban planning, and responsible development, including the Peterson Rich Office (PRO), which will reactivate the church and grounds; Jason Long of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in New York, who will reconstruct the shell of a nearby former commercial bakery called the Lantern that bookends the Village’s north side; and Simon David, principal of Office of Strategy + Design (OSD). David landscaped the Shepherd and will conceptualize the newest stage of the encompassing arts campus: thirteen acres of marina and waterfront properties named Stanton Yards. Scattered between these showcase commissions are rehabbed residences and studios, as well as restaurants, bars, and shops, making the Village an ecosystem of well-appointed spaces with a curated community of nonprofits, artists, galleries, and designers awaiting occupancy. The Curises promise to expand public access to the arts with this constellation of rehabbed and repurposed buildings situated over several city blocks. Most are cleared fields with grass or trees, many of which they own.
Renovation is an unofficial Detroit pastime (see HGTV’s Bargain Block), and with enough capital and connections, big renaissance dreams can beget enormous real-life change. The infrastructural work underway proves that the city’s good bones can be a foundation for vanguard concepts. With the Shepherd, PRO’s Miriam Peterson and Nathan Rich managed to break free of archetypal white-cube exhibition mechanics by constructing two freestanding versions of this space. The independent galleries within the church provide transformative viewing experiences, beginning with their lofty interiors, awash in flat illumination emanating from hidden light sources. The volumes are sculpted from primary geometric forms that give the atmosphere a space-age tenor, such as ceiling-high parallel walls that function as passageways, and a truncated sphere punctuating the roof of the central cube. The opening in the orb draws the surrounding early-twentieth-century Romanesque shell into dialogue, highlighting original liturgical details that are muted but largely intact, such as the stained-glass windows, mahogany column capitals, and the altar featuring local Pewabic pottery tiles. A spacious, unobstructed central crossing anticipates future performances and collaborations. The Lantern offers similar spaces for convening—its outdoor courtyard is a metaphorical hearth, with surviving industrial lattices overhead. The monolithic cinder-block exterior wall was drilled with fifteen hundred holes and filled with cylindrical glass “bullets” that are illuminated by ambient light.
The Curises smartly position Little Village as a community-oriented space that will foster creative collaborations, elevating the efforts of homegrown artists such as Charles McGee, whose “Time Is Now” retrospective—curated by the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit’s Jova Lynne—opens May 18 at the Shepherd, the cultural center’s inaugural show. The New York–based Allison Glenn, who grew up in Detroit, will serve as the Shepherd’s artistic director, bringing her curatorial know-how into examining the intersections between art and the public. The space will also be home to McArthur Binion’s Modern Ancient Brown Foundation, which supports BIPOC artists; the ALEO bed-and-breakfast; and Asmaa Walton’s Black Art Library, which will utilize the former church’s transept and confessionals. Nearby, the Lantern’s core occupants, Signal-Return letterpress workshop and Progressive Art Studio Collective (PASC), will schedule programming for diverse and disabled populations throughout Detroit. Upstairs are artist studios and residencies, and just down the street are I. M. Weiss Gallery and Castor Design, which was founded in Toronto in 2009.
Linkage Series (Blue 1), 2017. Photo: Jason Keen.
There is predictable anxiety that this monolithic new center of gravity for Detroit’s art scene will eclipse smaller cultural venues and endeavors both intellectually and economically (for instance, environmental justice activist/artist Jordan Weber’s land project at the East Canfield Art Park, roughly two miles northeast of Little Village). Skepticism from legacy Detroiters arises from the fact that some of the Village properties were part of a controversial grab in 2012, when Hantz Farms purchased nearly twelve hundred discounted parcels on the eve of Detroit’s bankruptcy. Hantz’s promises for urban food farming and jobs for city residents were thwarted by city regulations, but smaller-scale city farmers and entrepreneurs felt circumvented and still rally over inequalities in Detroit’s enforcement of blight violations and threats over land reclamations.
This type of gentrification might not technically displace residents, but it will redirect capital. And therein lies the question of a sustainable creative community: Will Little Village stimulate diverse economies? Historically, such projects rarely produce equal results for financial and racial inclusivity. In the early aughts, the city of Beacon, New York, blossomed around the Dia Art Foundation, helping some communities while pushing out others. During the 2010s, however, China’s designated “art zones” in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou flourished in defiance of political obstacles. But these endeavors boast one resource Detroit’s depopulated lots lack: people, foot traffic, and proximity to other large metropolises. Successful communities require multiple competitive viewpoints. Nonetheless, the Village lends a tony sheen and infrastructural credibility for a vision in which Detroit is viewed as a cultural destination, not merely an incubator for cultural exports like Motown or American automotive design.
Sustainable cultural development is a long game, and the Curises’ entanglements with Detroit’s big business, neighborhood stakeholders, and creatives give them a singular power to wield. The scope of their investments demonstrates their passion for channeling culture to Detroit’s east side, and the Shepherd could never have launched without the close, positive relationship the duo already shares with the city’s leadership. But ultimately, Detroit is responsible for promoting diversity and inclusivity beyond the investment stage. Issues like improving public transit and structuring taxes to funnel profits back into the land are necessary, despite the specters of municipal dysfunction and underhanded politics hiding in the weeds.
