MOCAD

I was born in Detroit in 1968 which is just after the big riots of 1967. The 1967 riots, everyone tells me, were the big turning point for Detroit: the beginning of the “white flight” and the beginning of some serious hard times for the city. As it happens though, my white family didn’t head off for the suburbs until 1985.

Still, I lived the first 17 years of my life in that city. Most of my K-12 schooling was in Detroit Public Schools which is why I still find myself chuckling when folks talk about how they MUST live in the suburbs because of the good schools. But of course, I don’t have kids but I imagine that if I did have kids, I wouldn’t haul booty to Ann Arbor just because they have a better school district. But whatever, this isn’t a blog about education in the city vs the ‘burbs.

This is a blog post about culture and about art and about how there is just something really cool about Detroit that few people other than natives seem to get. But sometimes they do get it and when they do, it is a pretty cool thing to see. I had one of those moments today when I read an article in the New York Times about the new Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit.

I am really looking forward to checking that place out. I hope they are able to capture some of the character of Detroit there. I think it is in a good location for that sort of thing.

http://www.mocadetroit.org/