For a few remaining days, a historic moment is unfolding across three of Detroit’s major arts and cultural institutions: The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), the Museum of Contemporary Art & Design (MOCAD), and the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History are all showcasing solo exhibits featuring Black women artists. With an eye on local talent, these institutions are not only celebrating work created by women but also amplifying homegrown stories that have shaped African American and Detroit identities. While the concurrence of these presentations is purely coincidental, it may be reflective of a broader shift in the cultural landscape, where feminine voices and visions of are elevated – in particular, women of color.
MOCAD opened From Scratch: Seeding Adornment, a solo exhibit featuring the work of Detroit-born LaKela Brown, in June 2024. Now based in Brooklyn, New York, Brown has been showcased in solo and group exhibitions worldwide and appears in museum collections across the U.S., but the MOCAD homecoming marks her first solo museum exhibit. The exhibit explores nourishment and adornment practices across the African diaspora, reflecting on ancestral and cultural legacies, memory, migration, and liberation through generations. Employing tactile assemblages and plaster reliefs, Brown archives familiar forms—such as collard greens, gold teeth, and door-knocker earrings—that celebrate both deeply personal and overarching traditions, practices, and identities.
Curation of the exhibit has been led by Jova Lynne, MOCAD’s inaugural Artistic Director, who has been helping reshape the museum’s artistic vision since assuming the position in 2023. Upon arrival, Lynne led in the curation of Sydney G. James’ epic solo, Girl Raised in Detroit, and the museum presented Judy Bowman’s Gratiot Griot a short time before – emitting winds of possible change in its not-so-distant future. LaKela Brown’s From Scratch: Seeding Adornment has been extended through Sunday, October 20, 2024.
Featured artwork by LaKela Brown (left). The artist, photographed by Sabrina Nelson.
Sabrina Nelson’s Frontline Prophet: James Baldwin opened at The Wright Museum on August 2, 2024 – for the iconic writer’s 100th birthday. The exhibit features more than forty representations of Baldwin conceived and created by Nelson over an eight-year period and includes poetry scrolls contributed by some of Detroit’s leading voices, including Detroit’s Poet Laureate, jessica Care moore, Michigan’s Poet Laureate, Nandi Comer, Scheherazade Washington-Parrish, Tongo Eisen, Joel Fluent Greene, and Armenia Irean. Installations invoking Baldwin’s environment are also a part of the exhibition, as well as an AR component developed by Black Terminus AR, and a short film by Danielle Eliska. In celebration of Baldwin’s centennial, the exhibit traveled the country before landing in Detroit, which is home for this treasured interdisciplinary creative and her co-curators, including Ashara Ekundayo. Frontline Prophet: James Baldwin runs through February 28, 2025.
At The Wright, also through October 20, 2024, you can enjoy one final weekend of photographer Adrienne Waleed’s Audacity to Thrive and Double ID from CCH Pounder’s esteemed collection. These two powerful exhibits feature works respectively created and amassed by Black women, rendering The Wright the singular presenter of three such exhibits at once for much of 2024.
Artist Sabrina Nelson with installation views. Photos courtesy of The Wright.
The DIA is currently home to Tiff Massey’s revolutionary solo exhibition titled 7 Mile + Livernois. The youngest artist to ever exhibit at the museum, Massey, an installation artist, metalsmith and sculptor, pays homage to Black Detroiters’ style through mammoth and immersive sculptural and mixed media works. The artist draws from her upbringing at the historic Avenue of Fashion intersection, where four distinct neighborhoods converged on varying iterations of opulence and individual flair. Massey’s sculptures appear in conversation with works by several other artists, meticulously culled by the artist from the museum’s collection. Katie Pfohl, the DIA’s Associate Curator of Contemporary Art, serves as an important link between the museum and the city’s art community, and recalls that ideas for the exhibit were already swirling upon her arrival in 2022. More than a year in the making, 7 Mile + Livernois is the largest exhibit by a Detroit artist to appear at DIA and boasts a full-year run, closing on May 11, 2025.
These are historic firsts for all three artists, significant milestones for the curators, and leaps of faith and evolution for the institutions. Run–don’t walk, to experience this rare trifecta of Detroit’s Black Feminine Divine.
Artist Tiff Massey by Taizo Taylor for The DIA (top). “What Up Doe’ sculpture, courtesy of the artist.
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