1,000 Places to See in the U.S.A. & Canada Before You Die (57 page)

Actually the Ann Arbor Street Art Fair is the first of four simultaneous award-winning art fairs that now take over Ann Arbor in July, sprawling across nearly every street and sidewalk and virtually shutting down the city. Together, they draw more than 1,100 national artists and more than a half-million art lovers perusing everything from fused glass to photography. The original show established in 1960 (now called “Ann Arbor Street Art Fair, the Original”) is a carefully juried affair that sprawls across the campus of the University of
Michigan. A powerhouse academic institution with a breezy indie spirit, the University of Michigan campus offers up its own artistic beauty, with classic vignettes of gargoylestudded buildings and ivy-covered walls and a visit-worthy Museum of Art.

The enormous university (with approximately 40,000 students) tends to draw the spotlight from Ann Arbor itself, a beguiling city of 115,000. Even more than a quintessentially cool college town, it has become the hub of regional research and the suburb of choice for Detroit intellects and anyone with a bit of a bohemian soul. Wander Main Street, a pretty, pedestrian-friendly streetscape bright with renovated historic buildings, sidewalk cafés, an interesting mix of shops, and nightspots like the Ark, hosting all manner of quality musical acts. A few blocks north in Kerrytown, Zingerman’s Deli enjoys a devout following among foodies from around the country, thanks to unusual ethnic offerings (Greek
hondroelia
olives, Indian
corgi
coffee) and homemade smoked whitefish salad. Even the 1,000 pounds of their signature corned beef cooked on the premises weekly seems barely to keep the masses satiated.

W
HERE
: 40 miles west of Detroit.
Visitor info:
Tel 800–888-9487 or 734–995-7281;
www.annarbor.org
.
S
TREET
A
RT
F
AIR
: Tel 734–994-5260;
www.artfair.org
.
U
NIVERSITY OF
M
ICHIGAN
: Tel 734–764-1817;
www.umich.edu
.
UM M
USEUM OF
A
RT
: Tel 734–763-UMMA;
www.umma.umich.edu
.
T
HE
A
RK
: Tel 734–761-1451;
www.theark.org
.
Z
INGERMAN’S
: Tel 734–663-3354;
www.zingermans.com
.
Cost:
lunch $15.
B
EST TIMES
: Mar for the Ann Arbor Film Festival (
www.aafilmfest.org
); mid- to late July for the Street Art Fair.

The Horror of Slavery, the Joy of Emancipation

Detroit, Michigan

In a city that boasts of great museums, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History is a standout, chronicling the poignant struggles and successes of the black community. The museum’s flagship exhibit
, “And Still We Rise,” takes visitors on an odyssey that begins in Africa 3.5 million years ago and culminates in modern-day Detroit. With cleverly designed dioramas, interactive exhibits, and twisting walkways, visitors are transported through life in an African bush village, passage on a slave ship, the unfolding of emancipation in America, the streets of Detroit during a blossoming era of African American independence, and much more. The stories stand heart-wrenching and horrifying at one turn, then sing of inspiration and admiration at the next.

With its 100-foot diameter, the museum’s impressive glass dome is two feet wider than the State Capitol’s.

The quality here is in the details. The conditions of the slave ship—complete with sound effects of suffering captives—are harrowing and lifelike. A look at the mid-20th century suggests how the auto industry helped create America’s first black middle class. The museum does not sensationalize—nor does it shy away from—controversial topics. It discusses the rise in racial tensions in the 1960s and subsequent 1967 race riots in Detroit—which left 14 square miles of buildings destroyed—without placing blame.

Dr. Charles Wright, a Detroit physician, established the city’s first International Afro-American Museum in 1965 with the help of a handful of local citizens. It slowly evolved into the current museum, a world-class facility in the heart of Detroit’s Cultural Center. Along with its exhibits, the museum includes a research library; a 317-seat theater that hosts a variety of live performances; and an excellent museum store.

With the safe haven of Canada just across the Detroit River, Detroit played a key role in the Underground Railroad, the escape route slaves followed to the “free soil” northern states and the new life Canada promised. Several historical markers and sites downtown document this rich abolitionist history. Ironically, the route “north to freedom” was actually south of here: Because of an odd quirk in geography, Detroit is the only sizable city in the continental United States from which you can go south into Canada.

W
HERE
: 315 E. Warren. Tel 313–494-5800;
www.maah-detroit.org
.
B
EST TIMES
: Friday Night Fever, a weekly performance series; Feb for celebrations of Black History Month.

Motor City’s Wealth of Artistic Masterpieces

Detroit, Michigan

Detroit can thank the wealth generated largely by the auto industry for the collections at Detroit Institute of the Arts, one of the nation’s greatest art museums. The DIA has been the centerpiece of Woodward Avenue’s
Cultural Center for more than 50 years. The imposing Italian Renaissance—style building is a masterpiece in its own right, and its labyrinth of more than 100 galleries houses an almost encyclopedic inventory.

Virtually every artistic period and genre is represented here, from ancient Mesopotamian stone sculptures to contemporary art. The museum’s greatest strengths are Dutch-Flemish and French Impressionist paintings, German Expressionist art, medieval armor, and Egyptian art and artifacts.

Even those with little exposure to art may recognize some of the famous pieces on display: Rodin’s
The Thinker
(one of eight bronze
casts in the U.S.) and Vincent van Gogh’s
Self Portrait.
Not to be missed—in fact, hard to miss—are the
Detroit Industry
frescoes by Diego Rivera, the great Mexican muralist. Considered some of his most impressive and successful works, these complex murals occupy all four soaring walls of the museum’s main hall (now called Rivera Court), and represent a thought-provoking visual essay on the evolution and influence of Detroit’s industrial and labor movement of the 1930s. City leaders were outraged by Rivera’s damning criticism of capitalism; ironically, it was a visionary Edsel Ford who both commissioned the work and then saved it from being whitewashed.

Rodin’s famous sculpture
The Thinker
stands guard at the Detroit Institute of the Arts.

DIA completed a $158 million renovation and expansion in 2006, part of a new vitality energizing the Cultural Center and down Woodward Avenue to the river, home to the new Comerica Park baseball stadium, renovated theaters, and a buffed-up waterfront.

W
HERE
: 5200 Woodward Ave. Tel 313–833-7900;
www.dia.org
.
B
EST TIMES
: Fri nights at the DIA, when artist demonstrations and lectures are given; early June for the Detroit Festival of the Arts (
www.detroitfestival.com
).

The Monumental Legacy of the Motor City

Detroit, Michigan

It’s hard to imagine an industry that shaped a culture as much as the auto industry shaped America’s in the 20th century. It eliminated streetcars and created suburbs. It introduced the assembly line and the hourly wage. It
spawned a transient nation of road trips, motels, drive-ins, and family summer vacations.

It all had its roots in Detroit, where Henry Ford, John and Horace Dodge, Walter Chrysler, Ransom Olds, and other inventive minds tinkered with the horseless carriage in the late 1800s and early 1900s, creating one of the most powerful industries in the world (see p. 528). The global headquarters of the “Big Three”—Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors—remain in metropolitan Detroit, inextricably linking the city and its automotive legacy. The Motor City is where the latest, greatest designs are unveiled every January at the North American International Auto Show; it’s where more than 40,000 classic and special-interest cars show up for the annual Woodward Dream Cruise in mid-August (the largest automotive event in the world, attracting 1.7 million car enthusiasts); and it’s where an array of fascinating museums and tours chronicle the origins and rise of it all.

A 1956 Dodge Custom Royal Lancer is one of the many cars on display at the Walter P. Chrysler Museum.

The star has long been the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, part of a vast complex known collectively as “The Henry Ford” in Ford’s hometown (and now Detroit suburb) of Dearborn. The 81-acre Greenfield Village features an amalgamation of some of America’s most significant historic buildings—
including Thomas Edison’s laboratory and the cycle shop where the Wright Brothers invented the airplane—both of which were moved here and painstakingly rebuilt. Inside an enormous 8-acre exhibit hall, the museum once dubbed “Ford’s Attic” includes everything from one of the largest steam locomotives ever built to an exhaustive car collection that traces the automobile’s evolution and its effect on society.

The Henry Ford is also the departure point for a tour of the Ford Rouge Factory (named for the adjacent River), Detroit’s only public tour of a vehicle-manufacturing plant. The original 1.5-mile-long Rouge plant is an icon of the Industrial Age: Built in 1917, it employed a staggering 100,000 workers and was considered “the first wonder of the industrialized world,” where raw materials came in by freighter at one end and finished automobiles came out the other. Recent additions to the vast complex mean you’ll begin with a virtual-reality theater experience before watching F-150 trucks being assembled along a quiet and spotless factory floor.

Also in Dearborn, the Automotive Hall of Fame is the Cooperstown of the auto industry, paying homage to the people who affected and advanced the industry. Here too are the anecdotes: When Henry Ford couldn’t make a $5,000 payment to the Dodge brothers’ machine shop, he instead paid them in Ford Company stock—profits from which the brothers later used to start their own car company.